[echoangle]

> Every year, speculation articles appear with people guessing winners (for the Pulitzer and National Book Award and Booker in particular) based on absolutely irrelevant factors like whether an entirely different jury liked this author’s last book five years ago, or whether this book was on other juries’ lists for other prizes. Any article that gets people talking about books is a great thing, but the speculation part is, I hate to say it, useless.

How is that irrelevant? I don’t think the idea is that the previous information causes the book to be chosen next, but it should be an indicator that the book is good.

Just like a student writing a good exam isn’t irrelevant when deciding the next grade, even though the good grade itself doesn’t cause another good grade. But it still influences the expectation.