Semi Bragging and a $200 Reward

[djack]

I think that's fair, because KEM came awfully close to fulfilling your contest.

[mmbt0ne]

[ QUOTE ]
To those who pointed out that I haven't verified that the Amazon listed authors have whitepages.com addresses, realize for a moment that some of the authors may actually be unlisted! While I multiplied the whitepages.com result by 1.5, there was no such multiplier for the Amazon results.. The fact that "accuracy is probably not vital", and I was 12% when only 10% was needed, and I don't see how this isn't a win for me.

[/ QUOTE ]

People don't want to be listed on whitepages because they don't want people to know their phone numbers. Why wouldn't someone want their book to be listed on a site that can make them money?

[chunk]

I'm too late I guess but I clearly have the winner.

There is one White pages listing under Anonymous (Thomas). 2 if you count Alchoholics.

Amazon has 40,072 listed titles.

[Mens Rea]

Holy crap you people have some free time! Very entertaining though.

[Oilcan]

[ QUOTE ]
I am 90% sure that I can make a claim about my extended family that is awfully neat. There are less than 100 adult Sklanskys in the United States. A white page search implies the number is more like 70. I think all of them are no further away than third cousins from me. And nine of them have written books. In fact at least seven of them have written more than one book! (Check out Amazon). Thus ten to fifteen percent of all adult Sklanskys are book authors- David A, David B, Morris, Amy, Milton, Ron, Jeff, Jack, and Gloria.

I contend that there is NO OTHER FAMILY NAME that can boast this percentage of book authors (save those names that are so rare that one or two of them being an author would beat ten percent).

That's pretty cool if true. Maybe even something worth publicizing. And I call it "semi bragging" since I can't take any credit for it. But I have done no research on the topic. So I offer a $200 reward to anyone who can refute it. By which I mean find a name where there are more than 50 members who have a higher percentage of authors on Amazon.com than Sklanskys have.

If you fail, but have obviously spent some time on it and can document your failed results, I'll send you a free book of your choice (up to ten people).

(To make it easy, I'd suggest using white page searches and multiplying by 2.5 unless they also inlude enumerating unlisted numbers. If so multiply by 1.5. Accuracy is probably not vital because I don't think it will be close.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice.

The "rules" to this reward are written so vague, you'd never have to pay it.

Your a smart guy getting other people to do some work for you.

regards