

The mystery of filtering by sorting - mnemonik
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/07/the-mystery-of-filtering-by-sorting.php

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thwarted
I think the confusion comes from the use, in English, of the word sort in
phrases like "sorting laundry", "sorting recyclables", and "sorting mail",
which is actually an "iterative filtering" (ie "grouping") operation. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorting> and
<http://www.google.com/search?q=define:sorting>

This is similar to the confusion between "and" and "or" I've seen people have
when using computers to do searches. In plain English, "and" is often an
expansion term, in that it often expands the result set rather than restricts
it, similar to "or".

    
    
      go through that file cabinet and find 
      all records for Alice and Bob.
    

This actually means "give me records matching Alice or Bob", because the
name/ownership/topic field is mutually exclusive (if a record is for Alice, it
can't also be for Bob), and people intuitively understand that. So it expands
to "give me (records matching Alice) and (records matching Bob)", not "give me
records that match Bob from the set of records that match Alice".

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mgrouchy
Call me naive, but I didn't know there was any mystery surrounding filtering
and sorting. I don't see any ambiguity there.

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timcederman
You're naive. Go run some user studies and observe how differing mental models
affect how people interact with controls such as filters, facets and sorts.

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heed
A search engine that can sort by, say, date and give me results in real time
would be pretty useful. Why not, Google?

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DTrejo
A very helpful article for sites where filter/sort/search functionalities
coexist.

