Thursday, October 18, 2018

SearchResearch Challenge (10/18/18): How can you find lists of things?


I often find myself in the position of looking... 

... for a list of things.  It's a natural way to try and get your mind around a given topic--if I can give you a list of items in that category, you'll get a sense of how that category of thing is defined (or at least how it looks).  People often do this when it's hard to define something precisely.  The difference between a vegetable and a fruit is tricky, but if I tell you that apples, strawberries, bananas, and grapes are all fruits while potatoes, carrots, corn, and peas are all vegetables, you'll start to get the idea. This doesn't give you a technical definition (difficult question: is a cucumber a fruit or a vegetable?), but it gives you a working intuition.  

This came up for me a few weeks ago when I went to see an art exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelites.  I love their artwork, and while I knew a few of the artists (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and John William Waterhouse, I couldn't name any others, although I know I'd recognize their names).  Who are these folks??   Here's the kind of thing I wanted to get from a search:  



This week's Challenge is to figure out the best way to search on Google for a set of things that share a common property.  That is, to find a way to create this image above.  The Challenge: 

1.  Can you find a way to find a set of each of the following:  
      a.  Pre-Raphaelite artists 
      b.  fictional works written in the Regency era
      c.  clans in Scotland
      d.  trees that are evergreen throughout the year 
      e.  Canadian Prime Ministers   

Once you figure out how to do this, you'll be able to this, and much more!

As always, be sure to tell us how you do it. 

AND... if you find a particularly interesting set of things, be sure to leave a comment telling us about the great set you found (and what it is!).  

Search on! 




11 comments:

  1. I hate questions like this - as they seem too easy, so I worry I've missed something.

    Just adding the word: "List" at the end of "pre-raphaelite artist" generates the images as the Google knowledge top bar - plus a few more. i.e. pre-raphaelite artist list

    The others do the same i.e.

    b. fictional works written in the Regency era - enter in or (not even bothering with quotes). The first gives a Wikipedia list i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_novel while the second gives https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/regency-era-fiction - not as good as the Wikipedia list as some are recent.
    c. clans in Scotland - add the word list and you get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scottish_clans
    d. trees that are evergreen throughout the year - add the word list and you get several lists including Wikipedia and https://www.hunker.com/12003930/list-of-evergreen-trees. Changing the search to be is better as you don't even need the Wikipedia page as it comes right out on Google's knowledge bar!
    e. Canadian Prime Ministers - just add list. Appears across the top.

    A nice one is . And an interesting one is except that cuts off around 1500 so I tried and got this site: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/feb/13/popes-full-list - the first Pope - Pope Peter - also held the papacy for longer than any other following pope over the next almost 2000 years! There are also lists of sexually active popes, married popes, French popes....

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  2. Oops - I used chevrons to mark what I entered. Probably should have put in [ ] as they got removed. So I'll repeat the bits missed.

    b. fictional works written in the Regency era - enter in [fictional works written in the Regency era list] or [Regency era fiction list] (not even bothering with quotes). The first gives a Wikipedia list i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_novel while the second gives https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/regency-era-fiction - not as good as the Wikipedia list as some are recent.

    d. trees that are evergreen throughout the year - add the word list and you get several lists including Wikipedia and https://www.hunker.com/12003930/list-of-evergreen-trees. Changing the search to [evergreen trees list] be is better as you don't even need the Wikipedia page as it comes right out on Google's knowledge bar!

    A nice one is [female Nobel Prize winners list]. And an interesting one is [popes list] except that cuts off around 1500 so I tried [popes before 1500 list] and got this site: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/feb/13/popes-full-list - the first Pope - Pope Peter - also held the papacy for longer than any other following pope over the next almost 2000 years! There are also lists of sexually active popes, married popes, French popes....

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  3. 1. Can you find a way to find a set of each of the following:
    a. Pre-Raphaelite artists
    b. fictional works written in the Regency era
    c. clans in Scotland
    d. trees that are evergreen throughout the year
    e. Canadian Prime Ministers

    I remember a way. Once you shared with us the trick of using in the query [List of….]

    Therefore, [list of Pre-Raphaelite artists]

    Google gives us the images in the carousel and also good results like this. I searched in English and when tried in incognito, my settings search in Spanish. I got the same images no matter the language. That is great.

    Wikipedia. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

    For c and e, the same form works, just changing the object of our search.
    [list of clans in Scotland], [list of Canadian Prime Ministers]

    For b, this was my process.

    Tried with: [fictional works written in the Regency era] which gives us the major writers of classic Regency fiction. In Wikipedia read that there are two main types of Regency novels: Classic and Modern

    [list of Classic Regency fiction works] gives a list but not the one we are searching in a exact way.

    And [list of Modern Regency fiction works]

    Good Reads, Regency literature lists

    Then decided to try a “simple change” [list of classic regency fiction novels] and Google gives us the answer

    Finally, [list of evergreen trees] gives us the results for this kind of trees.

    ReplyDelete