
How does journalism fare in a world where algorithms trump messy chance? - bjonathan
http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/08/googling-serendipity-how-does-journalism-fare-in-a-world-where-algorithms-trump-messy-chance/
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terra_t
The right way to think about S.E.O. and social media operations is that it's
all about chance -- first you do what you can to get the odds in your favor,
then you buy as many tickets as you can.

Search engine designers think about it statistically too; Google doesn't
understand a damn thing, but the algorithms "bet" that a certain choice will
be useful for end users. I was at a machine learning talk lately where they
described it as a "multi-armed bandit".

