http://yodiwan.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/morning-brief-may-8-2008/ News, Tips, Trends and Miscellany for Book Publicists Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:56:35 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 http://yodiwan.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/morning-brief-may-8-2008/#comment-81 ed Thu, 08 May 2008 18:43:07 +0000 http://yodiwan.wordpress.com/?p=126#comment-81 The problem with Nielsen's "study" is that it doesn't factor in the percentage of people who read a long-form piece at the lower WPM rate, or those who might be particularly interested in long-form sites. Nor does any of this take into account a Flesch-Kincaid readability index of the content, which would seem an important attribute to take in. Nielsen's "conclusions" here are as useless as his obvious conclusion that "users tend to spend more times on pages with more information." Without accounting for these details, this is junk science, if indeed any serious mind can accept this as "science." I also liked Nielsen's casually elitist assertion that "[o]ne downside of the study is that the users had above-average intelligence." Intelligence by what standards? How much one agrees with Nielsen? The problem with Nielsen’s “study” is that it doesn’t factor in the percentage of people who read a long-form piece at the lower WPM rate, or those who might be particularly interested in long-form sites. Nor does any of this take into account a Flesch-Kincaid readability index of the content, which would seem an important attribute to take in. Nielsen’s “conclusions” here are as useless as his obvious conclusion that “users tend to spend more times on pages with more information.” Without accounting for these details, this is junk science, if indeed any serious mind can accept this as “science.” I also liked Nielsen’s casually elitist assertion that “[o]ne downside of the study is that the users had above-average intelligence.” Intelligence by what standards? How much one agrees with Nielsen?

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