It was a dark and stormy night.
Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
11–20 of 120 posts
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#12After trying a lot, I only saw lines from books written originally in English. Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite: > Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. My translation: "Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant after…
Nevertheless, García Márquez preferred Rabassa's English translation to his original!
There's an okay Netflix mini series of it, FYI.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#13This reminds me how much weight a great opening sentence carries. Some of them are memorable decades later because they establish the tone immediately
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#14> so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time
If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1].
On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%) seeing quotes they've already seen before. This is an example of the coupon collector's problem[2].
The way to avoid both these problems is to shuffle the quotes into a random order, just once, and remember that order. The first time a user comes to the page, start at a random index in that shuffled list, and from then on, simply move to the next item in the list. Every user will get a unique set of random quotes, but will see no repeats until the list is exhausted, and will be guaranteed to be able to see all available content in just 60 refreshes.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector%27s_problem
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#15After trying a lot, I only saw lines from books written originally in English. Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite: > Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. My translation: "Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant after…
>I assume I'll not see my favorite
Your favorite was the first I saw. Just FYI.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#16wonderful project thanks for making it :)
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#17This reminds me how much weight a great opening sentence carries. Some of them are memorable decades later because they establish the tone immediately
Either that or they’ve been repeated by the audience so often as to lose all their appeal.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#18> so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1]. On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%)…
Make sure you fingerprint every user to make sure they're using the right index value /s
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#19Frustrating without a way to get to the list of works, because it's not clear when you've seen them all. You start having to guess how many there are, based on how many you have seen and how many have repeated, and the distance between seeing ones you haven't yet seen before. A problem made worse, the more quotes there are, as if you have N quotes, then you expect to see the one you see the most often approximately e…
I cheated and looked at the source:
There are 60 quotes.
So expect ~280 refreshes to collect 'em all.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#20I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :)
For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem natur in hir courages, and longon folk to gon on pilgrimages.
Somehow that has always stuck with me, I'm sure I'm missing parts, but from the first time I ever heard these lines the just imprinted themselves like a song to me.