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Thought experiment: you see two reference books, one at 100 pages and the other at 200. Do you wonder if the smaller book could be concise and well-written, or
by andreyf 17y ago
Thought experiment: you see two reference books, one at 100 pages and the other at 200. Do you wonder if the smaller book could be concise and well-written, or do you immediately assume "bigger is better" and reach for the tome?
Seriously, people do this? What is wrong with them? I'd try to imagine every justifiable reason to buy the 100 page one. Padded technical writing deserves its own level of hell.
- kalid 17y agoAgreed -- a recent blog post on HN (I can't seem to find it now) mentioned how an author had to turn a 500-page book into a 700-page one to make it seem "authoritative". This thinking basically games our heuristics -- if all else is equal (which is never the case), then the longer book has more useful content. And given the way we're conditioned in school, a 20-page paper must be more valuable/important than a 5 page one.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoObligatory: http://i.imgur.com/RzRcw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/RzRcw.jpg
- aoriste 17y agoAnd, if giving direction to a newcomer - I'd pass her the slimmer volume 9 times out of 9.