In an effort to answer the question, "How 'great' are the Great Books?", I have created the beginnings of a crowd sourced survey, and it would be "great" if y'all were to beta test it for me -- http://bit.ly/bPQHIg
The list of Great Books of the Western World was based on 102 "great ideas". My survey randomly selects one of the great ideas, two of the Great Books, and asks the you to select the "greater" work. All the while it returns "your" great books as well as the overall cumulative results. So far Montaigne's Essays is the "greatest" with Shakespeare's Antony And Cleopatra close behind.
What I'm trying to do underneath is compare people's opinions with a mathematical model based on TFIDF. After getting enough votes (100's of thousands, if not more) I want to see how well the model coincides with people's perceptions.
I'm also looking for ways to make the survey more fun to use. If y'all could give me any suggestions, then at would be... great.
Vote early. Vote often. It's easy. If everybody here answered 10 survey questions, that would result in close to 15,000 votes. The more you vote the more interesting your results will be.
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Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame
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