NameBase proximity search

What am I looking at?

Most of the time, you are looking at a brute-force attempt to make the best of a very bad situation. With 100 names on the screen, we have:

• 4,950 unique pairs of names, which must each be scanned and placed in a page-overlap matrix.

• A display that requires N - 1 dimensions (yes, that means 99 dimensions for 100 names) to accurately depict this matrix. Instead we have to use a computer monitor. Even with excellent bandwidth, these beasts are still one of the lowest-resolution devices in our culture.

• An attempt to show what we wanted to do, by displaying density lines between names, as opposed to what the brute-force program came up with by placing the names on a grid after millions of calculations. Unfortunately, these density lines often add to the confusion. But they function as a corrective to the limitations imposed by our two-dimensional grid.

You don't believe we need 99 dimensions for 100 names? Picture an example in which you have three points that you want to plot spatially, and they are all equally similar with respect to each other. Obviously, you end up with the points of an equilateral triangle. Now add a fourth point that also has the same number in the matrix.

Where do you put it? It has to go behind the screen or in front of the screen if you want accuracy. Sorry, you just ran out of dimensions.

Why bother? Well, it's sort of useful if you're already well-informed. The less well-informed should remember that the entire exercise is based on page overlaps. There are any number of reasons why two names might be on the same page, from a) no reason at all, to b) they are conspirators, to c) it's a good guy going after a bad guy. To put it impolitely, unless you've read at least a few relevant books, it's just possible that these diagrams will make you dumber rather than smarter.

Sorry about that. You still need a library card.

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