Silly, silly amazon

I like amazon. They've never let me down, and recently I've been really impressed with their stats. Things like "83% of the people who viewed this item bought a cat scratching post" are adding so much value to shopping online. It's good to see a wonderful, seamless application of some nice data mining.

The customer feedback and reviews are my main resource when trying to buy something as complicated as headphones, (I settled on these and am delighted with them), when there are literally hundreds of results, and until recently, I took note of the recommended items.

This morning I got an email from Amazon, not something that happens very often, but never the less, excitement set in - I like to think what the algorithm really thinks I would like.

The title was:

Amazon.com recommends "Discipline in the Secondary Classroom: A Positive Approach to Behavior Management (Jossey-Bass Teacher)"

How thoroughly disappointing. It's a tragic artifact of buying Madeline a million books for her teaching credential program. I've just found that I can "Improve my Recommendations" but it's not the same. You don't tell a best friend what things to consider from your personality before they buy you a birthday present. I want the algorithm to be my best friend.