
Information Condensation - prostoalex
http://kortina.net/essays/information-condensation/
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ivan_ah
The "condensed version of {{book.title}}" is an interesting idea, but not easy
to pull off. Many concepts are inherently complex, and don't lend themselves
to compression. For many topics though, a 2x -- 5x compression ratio is
probably achievable.

The part about paying hungry people with graduate degrees to do the summaries
is spot-on---they have the perfect balance of deep knowledge (ugrads might not
have enough context), but also not being too indoctrinated and crusty (profs
have a hard time seeing the world like young people see it).

The part where I disagree is that TED is something to emulate. There is rarely
something of substance in a TED talk. Sure each talk introduces you to a
concept, but it's more of a political speech (aimed to convince) rather than a
lecture aimed to educate you. So IMHO, the TED model is definitely not to be
emulated: we need more substance.

I have been thinking about this notion of "information condensation" for many
years now, though I call the idea "information distillation." I run a
publishing company based on this idea...

Our first book on math/physics achieves an 8x compression ratio, compared to
mainstream textbooks (from 2500pp to 300pp), but that was only possible
because ugrad math/phys textbooks are full of bullshit and padding... so just
removing that was a big win. I'm now working on a second book about linear
algebra, and having trouble reaching even a 2x compression ratio. I wonder
what it would be like in other fields of science (bio, chem, etc.)

The main problem with compression is you lose information, so it remains an
open question whether it can be done well, as in, can you lose the least
important information to cut out, while leaving the essentials in? Don't
misunderestimate the work involved in writing a book---it took me years to
write the math book.

