Except that my wife also got a genius reading level rating and she mostly only posts photos of our kids and comments on motherhood and our family life.
It makes me wonder about the algorithm they use. Certainly there are more technical blogs out there than mine that are getting college and lower reading level ratings. There is absolutely no information o the rating website as to how the level is calculated.
I have no idea either. But when I worked in corporate training we used similar tools. They did things like work out average sentence length, number of different words, how unusual the words were etc. None of this tells you if the content is remotely valuable or not. It does give you a hint as to how easy it is to read.
I find your blog easy and pleasant to read. Maybe it's reacting to things like "hydrothermal vents and methane seeps". But you can't get round that.
Kevin works at the Duke Marine Lab as a researcher at the Marine Conservation Molecular Facility studying the population genetics of vent fauna. He has an M.Sc. in Biology from Penn State where his research focused on marine invertebrate systematics and the community structure of chemoautotrophic foundation fauna at hydrothermal vents. Visit Kevin's personal website, where his CV lives, and follow him on Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, YouTube, Nature Network, Amazon, Research Blogging and Facebook.
Blogger With No Backbone
Eric worked in Satellite communications, computers and design for many years, but returned to school to pursue his early love of marine sciences. He is curently working on his Masters in Biological Oceanography at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point Campus. Eric also photo-blogs at Larval Images, has a personal site at Eclectic Echoes and his images are available on Flickr.
Bjorn is right. The point of these reading tools is to warn you if your reading levels are too high. Low is good. High is bad.
ReplyDeleteExcept that my wife also got a genius reading level rating and she mostly only posts photos of our kids and comments on motherhood and our family life.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me wonder about the algorithm they use. Certainly there are more technical blogs out there than mine that are getting college and lower reading level ratings. There is absolutely no information o the rating website as to how the level is calculated.
I have no idea either. But when I worked in corporate training we used similar tools. They did things like work out average sentence length, number of different words, how unusual the words were etc. None of this tells you if the content is remotely valuable or not. It does give you a hint as to how easy it is to read.
ReplyDeleteI find your blog easy and pleasant to read. Maybe it's reacting to things like "hydrothermal vents and methane seeps". But you can't get round that.
The point of these reading tools
ReplyDeleteLooks like the point of this reading tool is to slip unpaided advertising into people's blog. Yech.
Yeah whats up with that! That explains why there is no information about the whole thing.
ReplyDelete