Archive for the ‘Books’ Category.

Lektüre 2022


A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Andy Weir: Der Astronaut
  • Ozzie Adenborg: We Came to Rock – The Official Pretty Maids Journals
  • J. Michael Straczynski: Together We Will Go
  • Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows: Deine Juliet
  • Michael Palin: Erebus
  • James P. Hogan: Inherit the Stars
  • Hank Green: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
  • Jeff Wagner: Destination Onward – The Story of Fates Warning
  • Roy Gullane: Goulash Soup and Chips
  • Dar Williams: What I Found in a Thousand Towns
  • Volker Quaschning & Cornelia Quaschning: Energierevolution jetzt!
  • Dar Williams: How to Write a Song that Matters
  • Chris Hadfield: Die Apollo-Morde

Lektüre 2019

A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Robert Jordan: Crossroads of Twilight
  • Wolf Welling: Die Wächterin
  • Robert Jordan: Knife of Dreams
  • Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson: The Gathering Storm
  • Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson: Towers of Midnight
  • John Strelecky: Das Café am Rande der Welt
  • Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson: A Memory of Light

Lektüre 2018

A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Christoph Hardebusch: Feuerstimmen
  • Flake: Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag
  • John Green: Schlaft gut, ihr fiesen Gedanken
  • Robert Jordan: Lord of Chaos
  • Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords
  • A. Lee Martinez: Zu viele Flüche
  • Robert Jordan: New Spring
  • Ernest Cline: Armada
  • Robert Jordan: Der Weg der Klingen
  • Stanislaw Lem: Der Mensch vom Mars
  • Annie Darling: The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts
  • Robert Jordan: Winter’s Heart
  • Tom Winter: Der Sirius-Schatten
  • Jana Burbach & Hernán D. Caro: Stimmlos
  • Becky Albertalli: The Upside of Unrequited

Lektüre 2017

A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Christoph Weißenfels: Ischen Impossible II
  • Hagen Liebing: Meine Jahre mit “Die Ärzte”
  • Ernest Clive: Ready Player One
  • DJ BoBo & Judith Langhans: Popstar – Der ganz normale Wahnsinn
  • Jessica Winter: Break in Case of Emergency
  • Mischa Kaléko: Das lyrische Stenogrammheft
  • Benedict Wells: Vom Ende der Einsamkeit
  • Markus Zusak: Die Bücherdiebin
  • Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl
  • Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident
  • Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code
  • Wolfgang Hohlbein & Heike Hohlbein: Der Greif
  • Tommy Jaud: Vollidiot
  • Robert Jordan: The Great Hunt
  • Trudi Canavan: The Magician’s Guild
  • Andreas Eschbach: Exponentialdrift
  • John Fogerty: Mein Leben – meine Musik
  • Robert Jordan: The Dragon Reborn
  • Lois Tilton: Babylon 5: Im Kreuzfeuer
  • Trudi Canavan: The Novice
  • Trudi Canavan: The High Lord
  • Isolde Heyne: Lösegeld
  • John Vornholt: Babylon 5: Tödliche Gedanken
  • John Vornholt: Babylon 5: Blutschwur
  • Mape Ollila: Once Upon a Nightwish – Die offizielle Biografie 1996-2006
  • Ingo Siegner: Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss auf der Suche nach Atlantis
  • Felix Huby: Bienzle und die schöne Lau
  • Felix Huby: Paul Pepper und die tickende Bombe
  • Felix Huby: Bienzle stochert im Nebel
  • Janusz A. Zajdel: In Sonnennähe
  • Robert Jordan: The Shadow Rising
  • Andy Weir: Artemis
  • Robert Jordan: Die Feuer des Himmels
  • Bruce Dickinson: What Does This Button Do?

Lektüre 2016

A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Poul Anderson: Rebellenwelt
  • Peter Ames Carlin: Bruce
  • Bronnie Ware: 5 Dinge, die Sterbende am meisten bereuen
  • Poul Anderson: Ehrenwerte Feinde
  • Frank Böttcher & Sven Plöger: Klimafakten
  • Michael Schumacher: Tankard – Life in Beermuda
  • Ashlee Vance: Elon Musk – How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future
  • Max Frisch: Homo Faber
  • Jojo Moyes: Me Before You
  • Götz Aly: Unser Kampf 1968
  • Javier Marías: Die sterblich Verliebten
  • Grady Hendrix: Horrorstör
  • Joël Dicker: The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair
  • Max Frisch: Stiller
  • Meghann Foye: Lügen haben runde Bäuche
  • Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen
  • Frank Portman: King Dork
  • David Safier: Mieses Karma
  • Julia Neumann: Odins Auge
  • Bernd Groot-Wilken, Kevin Isaac & Jörg-Peter Schräpler (Hrsg.): Sozialindices für Schulen
  • Andy Weir: The Martian
  • Roger Willemsen: Das Hohe Haus
  • Marie Fredriksson & Helena von Zweigbergk: Listen to My Heart – Meine Liebe zum Leben

Lektüre 2015

A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Philipp Oehmke: Am Anfang war der Lärm
  • Frank Portman: King Dork Approximately
  • Poul Anderson: Dominic Flandry: Im Dienst der Erde
  • Andy Weir: The Martian
  • Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
  • Jean Philippe Blondel: 6 Uhr 41
  • Charles Murray: The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead
  • Poul Anderson: Höllenzirkus
  • Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven
  • Marc Elsberg: Blackout
  • Florian Illies: 1913
  • James Rollins: The 6th Extinction
  • John Scalzi: Lock In
  • Matthew Brzezinski: Red Moon Rising – Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age
  • Sina Trinkwalder: Wunder muss man selber machen
  • Donald A. Wollheim: The Secret of the Ninth Planet
  • Ben Mezrich: Sex on the Moon
  • Dave Eggers: Eure Väter, wo sind sie? Und die Propheten, leben sie ewig?
  • David Baldacci: The Escape
  • David Baldacci: Total Control
  • Susanne Schäpler: Das Geheimnis der Naga

Lektüre 2014

A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Elizabeth Wein: Code Name Verity
  • Matt Forbeck: The Con Job
  • Jürgen Becker: Geld allein macht nicht unglücklich: Mit dem Mysterium des rheinischen Kapitalismus aus der Krise
  • Andrew F. Gulli, Lamia J. Gulli (Hg.): Letzte Ruhe
  • Ian J. Deary: Intelligenz – eine sehr kurze Einführung
  • Rich Wilson: Lifting Shadows
  • Keith DeCandido: The Zoo Job
  • Detlev H. Rost: Handbuch Intelligenz
  • Dieter E. Zimmer: Ist Intelligenz erblich? Eine Klarstellung
  • Dar Williams: Lights, Camera, Amalee
  • Christoph Weißenfels: Ischen Impossible
  • Timothy Zahn: Erben des Imperiums
  • Jack Ritchie: Für alle ungezogenen Leute
  • Frederick Forsyth: Die Todesliste
  • Paul McAuley: The Quiet War
  • Michael Marten: Drei Klausuren und ein Todesfall
  • Isaac Asimov: Ich, der Robot
  • Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones’s Diary
  • Chris Hadfield: Anleitung zur Schwerelosigkeit: Was wir im All fürs Leben lernen können
  • Simon Garfield: On the Map
  • Timothy Gowers: Mathematik
  • Marc Lindemann: Unter Beschuss
  • Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Romulus der Grosse
  • Neil LaBute: The Mercy Seat

Lektüre 2013

A list of books I finished reading in the last 12 months:

  • Patricia Highsmith: Zwei Fremde im Zug
  • Theresa Couchman: The Unmapped Lands
  • Elizabeth George: A Suitable Vengeance
  • Khaled Hosseini: Drachenläufer
  • Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach
  • Marc-Uwe Kling: Die Känguru-Chroniken
  • Greg Cox: The Bestseller Job
  • Elizabeth George: For the Sake of Elena
  • Bertram Job: Bis zum bitteren Ende – Die Toten Hosen erzählen IHRE Geschichte
  • Allan Pease, Barbara Pease: Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps
  • Johan Harstad: 172 Hours on the Moon
  • Robin Sloan: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookshop
  • Robert Galbraith: The Cuckoo’s Calling
  • José Carlos Somoza: Das Einstein-Projekt
  • Winston Graham: Marnie

Measuring the Popularity of Novels?

Apparently, the amount of ratings on GoodReads.com is highly correlated with the ratings, at least for John Green’s four novels (r = .96). But is it really ‘the more, the merrier’? I picked four more authors (in a non-random fashion), had a look at the respective correlations for their novels, and made a couple of graphs to illustrate the results.

Scatter plot of amount of ratings and ratings

Novels by John Green, Maureen Johnson, J.K. Rowling, and Stephanie Meyer

The relationship is a negative one for Stephanie Meyer’s books. Two books of J.K. Rowling are outliers – her first one in terms of ratings on GoodReads, her most recent one in terms of rating. I therefore took the liberty to plot a quadratic fit (instead of a linear fit). It appears that John Green might be an exception (like the Mongols?) Also, Amazon.com ratings tend to be higher; and again, there is no clear relationship between the amount of reviews and the average rating.

And since I recently finished reading “On Chesil Beach”, here’s the data for Ian McEwan’s novels, along with a more appropriately scaled plot for Maureen Johnson’s books:

Scatter plot of amount of ratings and ratings

Novels by Maureen Johnson and Ian McEwan

By the way, the correlation between Amazon.com ratings and GoodReads.com ratings for the 40 books I used above is r = .89. The correlation between number of Amazon.com reviews and Goodreads.com ratings is r = .75.

PS: If anyone is interested in the Stata code for the graphs, let me know. I guess, I’ll add it here this weekend, anyway, but right now I should go to bed.

Null Hypothesis Significance Testing: The Fault in Our Stars

fishingboatproceeds

[…] The same is true on amazon, where the book’s average rating has actually gone up a bit in the past six months (although not in a statistically significant way). […]

Actually, the ratings have decreased in a statistically significant way (alpha < .05). I used the two most recently archived pages from archive.org, which do not cover exactly 6 months. Still, ratings before 2013-02-03 were higher than those after that date.

  • Before (2110 ratings): mean = 4.76 (SD = 0.014)
  • After (1232 ratings): mean = 4.67 (SD = 0.021)

A t-test (two-sided, unequal variances) yields p = 0.0009 (d = -0.12); and for the non-parametric fans, the Wilcoxon rank-sum (Mann-Whitney) test yields p = 0.0001.

Using 2012-10-19 as dividing date, yields similar results:

  • Before (1051 ratings): mean = 4.77 (SD = 0.020)
  • After (2291 ratings): mean = 4.71 (SD = 0.015)

A t-test (two-sided, unequal variances) yields p = 0.0188 (d = -0.09); the Wilcoxon rank-sum test yields p = 0.0008. Of course, significance testing might be a questionable procedure in this case – and also in general.

This is actually a census of all Amazon ratings, so there’s no need to test whether ratings differ. The sample is the population. However, the written reviews could be regarded as a subsample of the ratings of all readers.

Is it a random sample? I don’t think so. So can we draw proper conclusions from the significance test results? Nah. I won’t provide a comprehensive discussion of the benefits and problems associated with the null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). I’ll just name one of my favourite objections, which Cohen (1990, p. 1308) phrased nicely: “The null hypothesis, taken literally (and that’s the only way you can take it in formal hypothesis testing), is always false in the real world.” In the present, the null hypothesis would mean, that average rating of newer readers is exactly the same as the average rating of those who pre-ordered the book etc.

Anyway, the effect size suggests that the drop in ratings is very small, so it should be safe to argue that the book keeps appealing to new readers.

PS: Sorry for nitpicking; this should in no way diminish the article, which I think is highly insightful.

PPS: I spend a good 15 minutes in R trying to beat the data into shape, but I feel much more comfortable in Stata, so I switched and had the analysis in a few minutes. Here’s the do-file in case anyone in curious. (Haha, as if!)

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