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The xkcd survey

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251–260 of 281 posts

Re: The xkcd survey

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point was that if you're seeking out all the pairs when you curl them together, you're still spending unnecessary time and effort matching socks, just ahead of time instead of in the moment when you need socks

Exactly he does an O(N^2) Pair followed by a later O(N) search. Why not do a O(1) Pair folloed by an O(1) Search.

Intuitively I'd say a human pairing socks is far better than O(n2) because finding something that matches a given sock is close to O(1) on small sets.

Re: The xkcd survey

#252
post #71

My answer to 'Write any 5 random words' : 'Moon landing was a hoax'

I already had a wordlist on my computer, ‘enable1.txt’. I fired up IRB (Ruby) in the console and ran

    words = File.read('enable1.txt').split
    words.sample(5)
This gives a list like ["whit", "unrepair", "suavity", "roentgens", "tophs"].

Re: The xkcd survey

#253
post #139

I can't shake the feeling that this will just measure of how willing people are to follow instructions for no reason whatsoever.

Or as an alternative theory, Randall Munroe wants to know if it's OK to tell everyone when he throws away all his socks and buys a bunch of identical ones.

It is the one way to eliminate the problem of matching socks after laundry.

Re: The xkcd survey

#254

Who else? > Type five random words five random words

I would never, without quotes! (ie: Type "five random words")

Exactly. I know Randall definitely wouldn’t accept “five random words” because of this comic: https://xkcd.com/169/.

Re: The xkcd survey

#255

I wonder how many responses of : Cantaloupe');DROP TABLE Food;-- ol' Randal is going to get (or some permutation thereof). Figuring that Randal is pretty smart, I bet he has a piece of code to parse out that. Still, anyone here have a good hack that can just nuke days of his time whilst completing this form? Only other one I can think of him using is (for Matlab): Cantaloupe'); clear all; clc; close all;

yeah it's going into a docs spreadsheet rather than a db, at least directly, so I don't think he has much to worry about

I'll have to play with spreadsheet injection then

Re: The xkcd survey

#256

So is the last question not a common thing? Because I do it every year or so, but my wife thinks I am crazy.

Been wearing all black every day for a few years now. Knowing I don't have to fiddle with the world of clothing at all ever is comforting.

Re: The xkcd survey

#258
post #6

If you like this sort of thing, you may also enjoy: 1) My website Correlated.org ( http://www.correlated.org ), which has been generating weird correlations based on users' survey responses for more than four years. 2) Spurious Correlations ( http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations ) by Tyler Vigen, which also offers wacky correlations, but based on publicly available datasets rather than survey responses. 3)…

Correlated.org interests me. Scrolling down the front page, it's fun to try and form connections and explain correlations to yourself (probably wrongly).

Here are some of the ones on the front page I was able to think of a possible explanation for (many quite tenuous):

> among those who would be willing to observe a prison execution, 68 percent say they tend to stick to their decisions.

Sticking to your decisions might be a mark of social conservatism. In which case, being willing to observe someone being executed might correlate.

> among those who need corrective lenses to read, 54 percent prefer to play with dominoes as a tile game, rather than by toppling them

If it's myopia causing them to need glasses, well, myopia is apparently caused by not getting outside enough during childhood (and therefore not getting sufficient sunlight).

Perhaps, then, more active people would enjoy toppling dominoes more and have gotten outside more during youth (thus not developing myopia).

> among those who say that longevity runs in their family, only 26 percent like skim milk.

Maybe skim milk is a more recent thing, and people whose longevity 'runs in the family' would be more traditional? I'm really grasping at straws here.

> among those who use anti-dandruff shampoo, 54 percent say they are good Frisbee throwers.

Apparently dandruff can be caused by greasy skin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandruff#Causes) - is this more likely in more active people(?)

> among those who have recently done something dangerous enough that they had to sign a waiver, 73 percent find Irish accents to be especially attractive

I had two thoughts on this one:

1) Are people more likely to need to sign a waiver in certain countries? In which case, this might be a cultural thing.

2) People who've done dangerous things might be rather adventurous, and think Irish accents somehow symbolise that(??)

> among those who like the taste of honeysuckle nectar, 61 percent say their favorite kind of doughnut doesn't have a hole in it

Is honeysuckle nectar a sweet, fructosey thing? Well, doughnuts without holes often contain fruit jam. So someone who likes sweet, fruity things would be more likely to like both?

> among those who don't like couscous, 54 percent have witnessed an animal being born

People who live in the country are perhaps more likely to have witnessed an animal being born, right? (Though I suppose most people don't live on farms, hmm...) Since couscous is not a traditional foodstuff in the West, perhaps people living in the country, who are likely to be more conservative(?), would be less likely to enjoy couscous?

> among those who think that the only things that really exist are material things, 60 percent would prefer a messy roommate

This makes a certain intuitive sense to me, but I can't quite think of the words. The word 'hedonism' springs to mind, though might not quite be what I'm after.

> among those who find it hard to tolerate oscillating fans, 58 percent do the Electric Slide at wedding receptions

I wonder if this is a generational gap.

> among those who like raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing, 69 percent like candy corn

Like the honeysuckle nectar one, I suspect this is some common taste between the two foods.

Re: The xkcd survey

#259
post #191
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about it for a while, and then it occurred to me, that there are actually many ways one could possibly understand that -- thus replying e.g.: - cat - "cat" - 'cat' - panther (not exactly a cat, but kinda -- that's why it was in quotes, no?) - [one could type "cat" in one's terminal] - "Whiskers", etc. (i.e. name of one's cat) then, one could make a typo (thus e.g. "ca" or "catt"), or finally something more…

In a bit of "don't tell me what to do" pique, I typed the cat emoji, . Turns out something in Google Forms uses UCS-2 internally, so it rejected my whole survey. EDIT: I guess Arc isn't very good at this either.

> Turns out something in Google Forms uses UCS-2 internally, so it rejected my whole survey.

Google love Java to bits, and it's UCS-2ish.

Re: The xkcd survey

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never, without quotes! (ie: Type "five random words")

Exactly. I know Randall definitely wouldn’t accept “five random words” because of this comic: https://xkcd.com/169/ .

Yeah but the onus of proper communication in this case is on Randall so he'd be the one with his arm off.
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