As such, the selection process here will be biased towards the kinds of 'Ask HN' posts that can get voted highly (to be visible, to attract many comments), and within those, these are the most frequently mentioned books.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's always a good idea to pay attention to the selection criteria, as selection effects are everywhere. For example, it would also make sense to exclude such threads, to get a more representative idea of what books HN comments tend to talk about in natural contexts.)
Yeah, that kinda puts a damper on it for me. Only selecting "book" Ask HN's leaves out a lot of stuff. Just to illustrate: I was initially surprised not to see The Four Steps to the Epiphany on the list. Heck, I probably mentioned it 6 or 7 times last year on my own. But when I went back and searched, it seems like all the times that I mentioned that book were in threads that weren't about books per-se. And I'm sure plenty of other people will have similar anecdotes.
For example, it would also make sense to exclude such threads, to get a more representative idea of what books HN comments tend to talk about in natural contexts.)
Yes, exactly. I'd like to see a similar analysis done, but excluding those threads for the same reason.
It seems like with LLMs this year it ought to be easy to look at the whole comment base and pull out the book titles without having to use a “book” keyword
Glad to see I helped get Rudin into the top 10. :D
More seriously, I remember many of these questions and it’s important to understand sentiment matters. Many of the mentions of SICP are not glowing. Indeed, they’re specifically written by people who want to puncture the bubble of worship around the book.
(Like "Ask HN: Math books that made you significantly better at math?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34439828 and "Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35929112 and "Ask HN: Sci-Fi Book Recommendations" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35052757)
As such, the selection process here will be biased towards the kinds of 'Ask HN' posts that can get voted highly (to be visible, to attract many comments), and within those, these are the most frequently mentioned books.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's always a good idea to pay attention to the selection criteria, as selection effects are everywhere. For example, it would also make sense to exclude such threads, to get a more representative idea of what books HN comments tend to talk about in natural contexts.)