Read My Mind

Google adds have been around for a while and they must do a decent job at showing people relevant things. Otherwise google wouldn't be able to use them as their main source of revenue, no? Nonetheless, I've never been too impressed with google adds. While they are somewhat relevant to what I'm reading/doing at the time I see them, I've never clicked on one out of interest in what the add said, just out of curiosity of what they do once you click a few times.

Today I went to check for a new post at waiterrant.net and the add on the page caught my eye:



If you can't quite see, the amazon add is for a well known General Relativity book that is certainly in my get-when-I-have-money list. Also notice that this is on waiterrant which couldn't have anything less to do with science, math or anything similar. So I figured I was probably still signed on to amazon and it recommends based on a cookie or IP, right? Wrong. I was not signed on to amazon. It must be recommending based on a cookie, though. A few refreshes of waiterrant showed me adds for QFT in a Nutshell by Zee, the book for my GR class next term, Weinberg's QFT book, Peskin and Schroeder's QFT book, a cosmology book, Jackson's E&M and a math book. All but one of these are on my get-when-I-have-money list (the last one sits on my bookshelf already). It seems that amazon does a pretty good job at giving me recommendations. Of course I won't stop reading waiterrant to go buy a physics book that very second, but still, I'm impressed.