Summary of the two articles:

both discuss the evolution of culture and music.
one article fails to ask rigorous questions,
one succeeds delightfully.

Note — multiple renditions are displayed that may render slightly differently.
For any differences found:
I award a ★ to anyone who thinks they have legitimately found a difference. Honour system.

Mike Pacer [22:18]
Interesting piece on computational models of cultural evolution applied to changes in musical styles, it sounds related to some of the stuff that @david was mentioning the other day.
Mauch, MacCullum, Levy, & Leroi(2015 [1])
The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010.
(edited)

Mike Pacer [22:27]
however, i have to say, i’m not a big fan of this popular press explanation of the findings as saying that “hip hop is the most important music revolution”…because it just doesn’t follow from the data analysis that the original study’s authors conducted. I.e., The popular press author makes a claim about the relative importance of different kinds of music, but the actual “kinds" of music were obtained using LDA/topic-model style dimension reduction treating each of the individual songs as being a document, which then means that you cannot say anything about the relative importance of the different topics at different times (even if there is an apparently non-uniform distribution in the data when applying the topics back to individual songs). You used the totality of the data record to produce the features in a way that was agnostic to time. If a general increase in the total amount of music rose and was unique to a particular period of time, those instances will be well represented in the topic space and the relative uniqueness of their feature loadings to that area in time will (even once normalized for yearly relative frequency) appear to be more relatively “active” in the period even if they weren’t more “influential” in any substantial way.

latimes.com
Pop music’s most important revolution? That would be hip-hop
Forget the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson and Madonna. The most important cultural shift in American pop music began with the explosion of rap in the early 1990s.
(edited)

Mike Pacer [22:29]22:29
e.g., were we to do this with inventions… just because the iPhone was concentrated in time and has been used by hundreds of millions of people in that period of time (during which there was increased technological access in general) that does not prima facie mean that it was more important than, say, fire, writing tools & skills or the Gutenberg printing press.

Jordan Suchow [22:39]: apple: hater

—– Today May 7th, 2015 —–

Mike Pacer [00:06]
Did you first try  get stymied and then change to :apple:?

Yesterday, as of 2015_19_4_0207 when this was written. 2015_19_4_0216 when it was finished. ↩

Mike Pacer [22:18]
Interesting piece on computational models of cultural evolution applied to changes in musical styles, it sounds related to some of the stuff that @david was mentioning the other day.
[Mauch, MacCullum, Levy, & Leroi(2015[^yesterday])
The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010.
](http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/5/150081) (edited)

Mike Pacer [22:27]
however, i have to say, i’m not a big fan of this popular press explanation of the findings as saying that “hip hop is the most important music revolution”…because it just doesn’t follow from the data analysis that the original study’s authors conducted. I.e., The popular press author makes a claim about the relative importance of different kinds of music, but the actual “kinds" of music were obtained using LDA/topic-model style dimension reduction treating each of the individual songs as being a document, which then means that you cannot say anything about the relative importance of the different topics at different times (even if there is an apparently non-uniform distribution in the data when applying the topics back to individual songs). You used the totality of the data record to produce the features in a way that was agnostic to time. If a general increase in the total amount of music rose and was unique to a particular period of time, those instances will be well represented in the topic space and the relative uniqueness of their feature loadings to that area in time will (even once normalized for yearly relative frequency) appear to be more relatively “active” in the period even if they weren’t more “influential” in any substantial way.

[latimes.com
](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-pop-music-trends-20150505-story.html?track=lat-pick
)Pop music's most important revolution? That would be hip-hop
Forget the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson and Madonna. The most important cultural shift in American pop music began with the explosion of rap in the early 1990s.
(edited)

Mike Pacer [22:29]22:29
e.g., were we to do this with inventions… just because the iPhone was concentrated in time and has been used by hundreds of millions of people in that period of time (during which there was increased technological access in general) that does not prima facie mean that it was more important than, say, fire, writing tools & skills or the Gutenberg printing press.

Jordan Suchow [22:39]
:apple: hater

----- Today May 7th, 2015 -----

Mike Pacer [00:06]
Did you first try  get stymied and then change to :apple:?

[^yesterday]: Yesterday, as of 2015_19_4_0207 when this was written. 2015_19_4_0216 when it was finished.

"""
Mike Pacer [22:18] 
Interesting piece on computational models of cultural evolution applied to changes in musical styles, it sounds related to some of the stuff that @david was mentioning the other day. 
<a href="http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/5/150081">Mauch, MacCullum, Levy, & Leroi(2015<a href="#fn:57039" id="fnref:57039" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[1]</a>) 
The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010. 
</a> (edited)

Mike Pacer [22:27] 
however, i have to say, i’m not a big fan of this popular press explanation of the findings as saying that “hip hop is the most important music revolution”…because it just doesn’t follow from the data analysis that the original study’s authors conducted. I.e., The popular press author makes a claim about the relative importance of different kinds of music, but the actual “kinds" of music were obtained using LDA/topic-model style dimension reduction treating each of the individual songs as being a document, which then means that you cannot say anything about the relative importance of the different topics at different times (even if there is an apparently non-uniform distribution in the data when applying the topics back to individual songs). You used the totality of the data record to produce the features in a way that was agnostic to time. If a general increase in the total amount of music rose and was unique to a particular period of time, those instances will be well represented in the topic space and the relative uniqueness of their feature loadings to that area in time will (even once normalized for yearly relative frequency) appear to be more relatively “active” in the period even if they weren’t more “influential” in any substantial way.

<a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-pop-music-trends-20150505-story.html?track=lat-pick">latimes.com 
</a>Pop music’s most important revolution? That would be hip-hop 
Forget the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson and Madonna. The most important cultural shift in American pop music began with the explosion of rap in the early 1990s. 
(edited)

Mike Pacer [22:29]22:29 
e.g., were we to do this with inventions… just because the iPhone was concentrated in time and has been used by hundreds of millions of people in that period of time (during which there was increased technological access in general) that does not prima facie mean that it was more important than, say, fire, writing tools & skills or the Gutenberg printing press.

<dl>
<dt>Jordan Suchow [22:39]</dt>
<dd>apple: hater</dd>
</dl>

—– Today May 7th, 2015 —–

Mike Pacer [00:06] 
Did you first try  get stymied and then change to :apple:?

<li id="fn:57039">
Yesterday, as of 2015_19_4_0207 when this was written. 2015_19_4_0216 when it was finished. <a href="#fnref:57039" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a>
</li>

</ol>
</div>
"""

Mike Pacer [22:18]
Interesting piece on computational models of cultural evolution applied to changes in musical styles, it sounds related to some of the stuff that @david was mentioning the other day.
Mauch, MacCullum, Levy, & Leroi(2015 [1])
The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010.
(edited)

Mike Pacer [22:27]
however, i have to say, i’m not a big fan of this popular press explanation of the findings as saying that “hip hop is the most important music revolution”…because it just doesn’t follow from the data analysis that the original study’s authors conducted. I.e., The popular press author makes a claim about the relative importance of different kinds of music, but the actual “kinds" of music were obtained using LDA/topic-model style dimension reduction treating each of the individual songs as being a document, which then means that you cannot say anything about the relative importance of the different topics at different times (even if there is an apparently non-uniform distribution in the data when applying the topics back to individual songs). You used the totality of the data record to produce the features in a way that was agnostic to time. If a general increase in the total amount of music rose and was unique to a particular period of time, those instances will be well represented in the topic space and the relative uniqueness of their feature loadings to that area in time will (even once normalized for yearly relative frequency) appear to be more relatively “active” in the period even if they weren’t more “influential” in any substantial way.

latimes.com
Pop music’s most important revolution? That would be hip-hop
Forget the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson and Madonna. The most important cultural shift in American pop music began with the explosion of rap in the early 1990s.
(edited)

Mike Pacer [22:29]22:29
e.g., were we to do this with inventions… just because the iPhone was concentrated in time and has been used by hundreds of millions of people in that period of time (during which there was increased technological access in general) that does not prima facie mean that it was more important than, say, fire, writing tools & skills or the Gutenberg printing press.

Jordan Suchow [22:39]: apple: hater

—– Today May 7th, 2015 —–

Mike Pacer [00:06]
Did you first try  get stymied and then change to :apple:?

Yesterday, as of 2015_19_4_0207 when this was written. 2015_19_4_0216 when it was finished. ↩

Summary of the two articles:

Note — multiple renditions are displayed that may render slightly differently.For any differences found: I award a ★ to anyone who thinks they have legitimately found a difference. Honour system.

Note — multiple renditions are displayed that may render slightly differently.
For any differences found:
I award a ★ to anyone who thinks they have legitimately found a difference. Honour system.