Not much to say here, but I'm going to point you all at my Estimation Quiz, which might entertain some of you. You should bear in mind that it is quite difficult -- even after having compiled the questions, I don't usually score much more than 80% on it. (That may just tell you about my memory, of course.) Other guinea-pigs did rather worse.
Comments and questions appreciated. Feel free to link to it, if you want.
(I should say that there is an ulterior motive for building this quiz. But I'll tell you about that later. Also, sorry for not writing a more exciting piece. Later, I hope.)
Comments
Posted by Pete, Thursday, 26 August 2004 23:50 (link):
I got 22%. You're right, it's hard. My old science teacher had a phrase for people who miscalculated - "You've missed Mars", which seems somehow appropriate in the context of wildly misestimating things and not even hitting them within the error bars.
The political questions give some hint as to what the ulterior motive might be - to do with "how the other half lives" or, better, "all your opinions are based on false beliefs about facts" quizzes.
Posted by Michael Williams, Friday, 27 August 2004 00:28 (link):
Would it ruin whatever evil plans you have for this data if you made it clear that it is possible to give non-integer answers? Maybe I'm stupid, but I managed to submit my answers without realizing better guesses than whole numbers were possible. An explicit statement that there are no trick questions may also be appropriate.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Friday, 27 August 2004 00:48 (link):
Both good suggestions, and now implemented -- thank you.
Posted by Danny Yee, Friday, 27 August 2004 07:57 (link):
I scored 41%. I manged to get 0 for the astronomical questions, the one Australia-specific question, and the Scottish history question (even though I only recently read a history of Scotland).
Posted by Pete Stevens, Friday, 27 August 2004 09:46 (link):
I scored 41% on my first go on a prerelease version and slightly higher [43ish] on my second. I didn't do much better because I was more confident of all my answers - including the wrong ones so I got penalised for being a confident idiot.
I did however get almost all the astronomical ones right, which makes my history [and knowledge of the plastic bag situation in Australia] pretty poor.
We should play guess the ulterior motive though, my bet is he's using PCA to cross correlate to politics.beasts.org so at parties he can go
"How far away is the moon?"
[answer]
"Really, fasinating, I thought most people in favour of deporting Indians were taller..."
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Friday, 27 August 2004 10:51 (link):
It's a nice idea, but sadly I can't cross-correlate the two -- there's no state shared between the two sites. (That's what you get for taking the idea of a `privacy policy' seriously.)
That said, it would be excellent to discover what the supporters of different parties are right about, and wrong about on various of those questions. There's a bit more on this topic in this New Yorker article by Louis Menand, including a variety of terrifying examples such as:
Posted by Danny Yee, Friday, 27 August 2004 08:37 (link):
One suggestion. When you show the answers and scores at the end, the "True answer" should be shown in the same units as the participant's estimate.
Posted by Anthony, Friday, 27 August 2004 09:58 (link):
Woo! I got 46% I thought I was an idiot.
Posted by Chris Brooke, Friday, 27 August 2004 10:11 (link):
43%.
Posted by Nick, Friday, 27 August 2004 10:41 (link):
Woo! 59%, so I feel quite smug compared to other people right now. But, even though I got it right, I'd quibble a bit about the wording of the Act of Union question - isn't the date of the union of the crowns different to the date of the union of the governments/countries?
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Friday, 27 August 2004 11:09 (link):
Quite write -- my mistake. Ooops.
(The union of the crowns was in 1603. I've updated the question to read, ``... by which the kingdoms of England and Scotland were united.'')
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Friday, 27 August 2004 12:30 (link):
And -- oh god! -- there's a horrible typo in my comment! I think I'm going to go and hide....
Posted by Sean Fear, Friday, 27 August 2004 10:58 (link):
39%
Posted by Pete Stevens, Friday, 27 August 2004 11:05 (link):
A comment from my brother :
Q. Fraction of the adult population of the UK who are functionally illiterate? Your answer 80 per cent True answer 20 per cent ... Ironically and Embarrassingly I knew the answer but I misread the question...
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Friday, 27 August 2004 11:06 (link):
He's not the first person to have done that....
Posted by Chris, Friday, 27 August 2004 13:56 (link):
Eek, 29%. Not very good. I was a little too conservative with my error estimates, thinking that I wouldn't be rewarded for a large error marign, whether it contained the true answer or not. In retrospect, I probably would have picked up some points. I would have welcomed more emphasis on this in the preamble.
And on the strange hidden motive. Hmm. I initially thought the question on the pecuniary matters of asylum seekers would be central to the plot, but we already know everyone overestimates that wildly so it's a bit obvious. Or maybe it's an attempt to find matters we consistently delude ourselves over and reveal the exact shade of rose-tinted glasses we look through. It's well documented for example, that women over estimate the height of their partners, and the size of their newborns, and don't merely have a random error associated with their guesses.
Oh and I noticed Danny Yee posted. 'Tis a small world indeed. I emailed you a while back suggesting you review 'Investigations' by Kauffman. I hope you get around to it!
Posted by alison, Saturday, 28 August 2004 08:38 (link):
Feeling slightly better about my 43% now that I have seen other people's scores!
Any chance of some links to the original sources on the answers pages? I know I could google to find out everything I ever wanted to know about the use of plastic bags in Australia but it seems a bit pointless if you have already done so.
Also it didn't seem to like me typing .5 as a error estimate. Should I have written 0.5?
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Saturday, 28 August 2004 10:31 (link):
The sources are linked (with a `...', next to the real answer) on the scores page.
And yes, it needs a leading 0 for numbers <1.
Posted by Watching Them, Watching Us, Sunday, 29 August 2004 04:20 (link):
Which English Civil War ?
There were three of them:
1640 - 1646
1647 - 1649
1649 - 1651
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/timelines/index.htm
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