Tournament of Books discussion

You guys ask interesting questions.

What's the most polarizing book in this list? Did we just regress to the mean? There's no real way to find out, but we can try to get more data. Please take a few moments to tell me how you feel about the books that made the shortlist.

I'll accept answers until Friday at 11:59pm and post results over the weekend.

https://forms.gle/LywnVeKXMjCr5dHs9

Thanks Maggie. For people doing this on mobile, the options scroll to the right. When I first looked I couldn't see "hated it" and "didn't read it" as options.

Wow, this is awesome and you're fast! Thanks for doing this, I'll be so curious to see results!

Oh man! Girl after my own heart! (Made a bunch of these for my IRL Bookclub!)

Have already submitted my survey, but had another thought on a possible activity for Fall 2022: A Tournament of non-ToB Favourites (so books we love that missed the shortlist or didn't appear at all in the ToB-iverse).

I checked NINE books as LOVED so yes, this was a lovely tournament for me. Thanks everyone.

I'm very curious!

My proposal for a new activity is a Tournament of Zombie Favorites. Every ToB, we choose two books to have a chance of making it into the Finals. Sometimes they do, but more often the book that has taken the more traditional path through the Tourney gets chosen. I'm not sure how many of these books there are, but we could have a Tournament that lets these books that we loved but lost another shot at glory; for example from this year's ToB, Piranesi would be a possibility, but not The Vanishing Half, unless we chose to allow for those Zombie books that made the Finals but didn't win the Rooster to add more choices.

Isaac wrote: "My proposal for a new activity is a Tournament of Zombie Favorites. Every ToB, we choose two books to have a chance of making it into the Finals. Sometimes they do, but more often the book that has..."

I don't know, I think the list of favorites we came up with is much more preferable to me than zombies. According to my zombie notes, there would only be 19 choices for that idea, if we don't include any books that were in the finals. Personally, many of the zombies are books I disliked anyway.

C wrote: "Isaac wrote: "My proposal for a new activity is a Tournament of Zombie Favorites. Every ToB, we choose two books to have a chance of making it into the Finals. Sometimes they do, but more often the..."
Yeah, looking through the possible books there's a lot of overlap with the ToF and more Zombies that made the Finals than I thought, so maybe not the best idea, but anything that gave "Piranesi" another chance to win something seemed worth it to me. :)

YESSS Piranesi! :D

Done! Thanks, so much, Maggie, for everything -- for the ToF and for the statistical analyses and for this survey.

I did mine

43 responses so far! Early results suggest that we did not do too much regression to the mean as our winner is also currently the book most likely to be listed in people's top five!

Full results over the weekend, get your votes in by tomorrow night!

Maggie wrote: "43 responses so far! Early results suggest that we did not do too much regression to the mean as our winner is also currently the book most likely to be listed in people's top five!

Full results ..."

Ooh, it's good to know people seem to agree with the judges. I'll be interested to see if any of the final 4 was less popular than any of the other favorites that didn't make the zombie round. (Probably not though, since 2 of them were chosen by us.)

I give you the results from the "favorite"/"least favorite" section of the survey! I'll be back with the results from the other section later!

Question:"My favorite books in the tournament are (Choose up to 5):"

Ballots Submitted for Favorite Books: 47

Total Votes: 202

Average Number of Books per ballot: 4.3

The Five Books Most Commonly Chosen as "Favorite":

1. The Tsar of Love and Techno (26 votes)
2. Version Control (19 votes)
3(T). Milkman (17 votes)
3(T). A Tale for the Time Being (17 votes)
5. Girl, Woman Other (13 votes)

The Five Books Least Commonly Chosen as "Favorite":

12(T). Homegoing (10 votes)
12(T). Never Let Me Go (10 votes)
12(T). Skippy Dies (10 votes)
15. There There (7 votes)
16. Exit West (3 votes)

Question: "My least favorite books in the tournament were: (Choose up to 5)."

Ballots Submitted for Least Favorite Books: 46

Total Votes: 120

Average Number of Votes Per Ballot: 2.6

The Five Books Most Commonly Chosen as "Least Favorite"

1. Exit West (14 votes)
2(T). Life After Life (12 votes)
2(T). Milkman (12 votes)
4(T). Idaho (11 votes)
4(T). Stephen Florida (11 votes)

The Six Books Least Commonly Chosen as "Least Favorite"

11(T). Pachinko (5 votes)
11(T) There There (5 votes)
11(T) The Tsar of Love and Techno (5 votes)
14(T) Homegoing (4 votes)
14(T) Nothing to See Here (4 votes)
16. A Tale for the Time Being

Net Love Factor*

How I calculated it: (Favorite Votes)-(Least Favorite Votes)

Top Five Highest Net Love Factor:

1. The Tsar of Love and Techno (21)
2. A Tale for the Time Being (14)
3. Version Control (13)
4. Noting To See Here (8)
5. Girl, Woman, Other (7)

Bottom Six Lowest Net Love Factor:

11(T). Skippy Dies (2)
11(T). Skippy Dies (2)
13(T). Idaho (1)
13(T). Stephen Florida (1)
15. Life After Life (0)
16. Exit West (-11)

*The scientist in me wants to note that this is a problematic measure because there are both fewer ballots submitted and fewer total votes on the "least favorite" side, but I thought that it was really interesting anyway. Don't tell my grad school stats professors.

Most Polarizing Books:

Milkman (T- 3rd most common favorite, T-2nd most common least favorite)

Life After Life (T- 6th most common favorite, T- 2nd most common least favorite)

Idaho and Stephen Florida (Both T-6th most common favorite, 4th most common least favorite)

Link to spreadsheets with this data if people want to play with it:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Wow, thanks so much for doing this! So interesting, especially the least favorites, which included two of my favorites (Idaho and Milkman.) And I see there were more people who disliked Stephen who didn't talk about it in comments.

It's making me think how complex reading is, what brain differences and differences in experience might make a reader love books other readers dislike, and vice versa (especially since we're all generally drawn to the same types of books.) Fascinating.

I'm super amazed that the winner of the ToF would also be the top vote getter in this survey. Reminds me of the time I read The Wisdom of Crowds....

Thank you for putting all that together, Maggie! Definitely made me feel even better about choosing A Tale for the Time Being over Never Let Me Go in the ToF opening round. :)

Isaac wrote: "Thank you for putting all that together, Maggie! Definitely made me feel even better about choosing A Tale for the Time Being over Never Let Me Go in the ToF opening round. :)"

Sometimes it is totally easier to like a book when you know that other people loved it. However, I stand by the belief that while it is super interesting to know how we might have decided it if majority ruled, the whole point of the ToB is that's not how the decisions are made!

Question: Please place each of the final 16 in the category that works for you.

The Categories: Loved it!, Liked it. Oh, it was fine. Disliked it. Hated it! Never Read it.

Total number of ballots submitted: 48

Number of ballots with errors: 2 (both with two ratings for one book)

How I dealt with it: Split the difference and coded those votes as neutral (Oh it was fine.)

Most Read Books:

1. Exit West (93.75%),
2. Nothing to See Here (91.67%),
3. There There (89.58%)
4T. Pachinko; Girl, Woman, Other; Life After Life; The Tsar of Love and Techno (87.5%)

Least Read Books:
1. Never Let Me Go (81.25%)
13T Idaho; A Tale for the Time Being (79.17%)
15. Stephen Florida (70.83%)
16. Skippy Dies (66.66%)

Most Loved Books (Percent of people who read it who rated it "Loved it!")
1. The Tsar of Love and Techno (61.90%)
2. Nothing To See Here (52.27% )
3. Milkman (51.22%)
4. Version Control (48.78%)
5. Homegoing (46.34%)

Least Loved Books:
1. Never Let Me Go (81.25%)
2. Idaho (34.21%)
3. Pachinko (30.95%)
4. Exit West (17.78%)
5. There There (16,28%)

Most Hated Books: (Percent of people that read it that rated it "Hated it!")
1. Milkman (7.32%)
Books that had 1 person choose "hated it!" (~2.3% depending on the number of readers)
Stephen Florida; Never Let Me Go; The Animators; Girl, Woman, Other; Pachinko, Exit West
Least hated books (all with 0 haters!): The Tsar of Love and Techno; Nothing to See Here; Version Control; Homegoing; Life After Life; A Tale for the Time Being; Skippy Dies; Idaho

Most Neutral Books: (Percent of people who read it who rated it "Oh, it was fine")
1. Exit West (35.56%)
2. Life After Life (30.95%)
3. Idaho (23.68%)
4. Version Control (21.95%)
5. Skippy Dies (21.88%)

Least Neutral Books:
12. Nothing to See Here (13.63%)
13. Never Let Me Go (12.82%)
14. The Animators (12.20%)
15. Stephen Florida (11.76%)
16. A Tale for the Time Being (10.53%)

Most Positive Books (Percent of people who read it who rated it "Loved it!" or "Liked it")
1. Nothing to See Here (86.36%)
2. The Tsar of Love and Techno (83.33%)
3. The Animators (82.93%)
4. A Tale for the Time Being (81.58%)
5. Never Let Me Go (79.49%)

Least Positive Books
12. Milkman (68.29%)
13. Skippy Dies (65.63%)
14. Life After Life (61.90%)
15. Idaho (60.53%)
16. Exit West (55.56%)

Most Negative Books (Percent of people who read it who rated it "Disliked it." or "Hated it!")
1. Stephen Florida (17.65%)
2. Idaho (15.79%)
3. Milkman (14.63%)
4. Pachinko (12.5%)
5. There There (9.52%)

Least Negative Books
12T. The Animators; Homegoing; Version Control (4.88%)
15. The Tsar of Love and Techno (2.38%)
16. Nothing to See Here (0%)

Link to spreadsheet for anyone that wants to play with the data:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Thanks so much for doing this.

Most Polarizing Books:
Milkman...
Life After Life...
Idaho and Stephen Florida...

The entry on this list that surprised me was =Life After Life=; I didn't expect it to be polarizing at all. I think we all knew that =Idaho= was a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it read, and that =Stephen Florida= and =Milkman= were polarizing choices as well. But I thought the Atkinson was pretty inoffensive. I was also surprised to see =Pachinko= on the most negative books list.

I did a quick "intensity" ratio for the books - (Loved It! + Hated It!)/(Liked It + Fine + Disliked it)

Only 3 books had ratios > 1:

1) Tsar
2) Milkman
3) Nothing to See

And 3 books had ratios <= 0.5

14) Pachinko
15) Exit West
16) There There

I'm surprised that there was so little passion for =Exit West= given that it was the most read book on the list, that =Nothing to See Here= didn't do better (or get more cries of "injustice!") given its ranking, and that =Skippy Dies= did so poorly by this scale (0.6 !) given all the love it gets in the comments.

Sadly, I haven't been able to find a not-screamingly-obviously-bogus statistic (e.g., I can make it work if I count my votes 5x everyone else's votes, which, while it is easy to justify to me, is not so easy to justify to everyone else) to move the obviously best book ahead of the tournament winner. Oh well.

I've very surprised about the Exit West result. Maybe we have a group bias against unexplained magic doors.