Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The xkcd survey

docs.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 281 posts

Re: The xkcd survey

#261

Post by pervycreeper »

thanatropism wrote: post #142
Xcelerate wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always the number everyone thinks no one else will choose.

These are the prime numbers between 20 and 100: 23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71 73,79,83,89,97 Evens are out; so are small multiples. A multiple of three might end in 3, 9 or 7. A multiple of 7 may end in 1. So a "conservative mental arithmetic sieve" that wants to make sure one's picking a prime number will coalesce around 29 or 37. Myself, I picked 11 and 17.

Interesting, although this raises the question of why someone would prefer to choose a prime number over composite ones.

Re: The xkcd survey

#262

Post by GhotiFish »

blinry wrote: post #165
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #3

> On a scale of 1 to 5, which number is your favorite? > 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Chuckle...

If you liked that question, check out the Self Referential Aptitude Test: http://faculty.uml.edu/jpropp/srat-Q.txt

Arg! Help!

I must of miss-stepped somewhere because I think I proved the answer to Q8 was C, so Q3 and Q4 had to add up to 6, but Q1 says Q3 or Q4 has to be B, and they can't BOTH be B, because of Q2. So I'm stuck! I've done something wrong.

Maybe I'm reading one of these questions wrong? Rats.

edit: oooooops, C is 2 away from E.

Re: The xkcd survey

#263

Post by stedaniels »

I wonder how much the dynamic URLs to the forms are playing a part in this. Each refresh of the comic [1] and homepage [2] gets a different form URL. Are these being associated with other data from the xkcd.com domain..? And how much has it messed up Randall to have such shenanigans defeated by a direct form URL being submitted to Hacker News.

In fact, how do we know that the form URL submitted to Hacker News is one of Randalls?

Dang should probably change the URL to the comic permalink: [1]

Though I am late to the party and this might not get noticed.

[1] http://xkcd.com/1572/

[2] http://xkcd.com/

Edit: Actually refreshing the comic URL [1] is getting only a range of URLs to forms. More often than not the forms answers are in a different order, I suppose to either prevent bias, or encourage it and monitor it.

Re: The xkcd survey

#264

Post by tripzilch »

Scarblac wrote: post #238
kittenfluff wrote: post #7

=== SPOILER ALERT! === The most interesting question, to me, is the one about which words you know the meaning of. About half of them aren't real words. I assume this question is used partly as a gauge of vocabulary (how many of the real words do you recognize) and partly of honesty (how many of the fake words do you claim to recognize).

As a non-native speaker, this was a hard question to be honest on. I recognize the word "rife", I can use it in a sentence, but _do I know what it means_? I can't remember what I clicked.

I wondered the same (also a non-native speaker), but I figured if I can use the word correctly (to my knowledge) in a sentence, it means I know what it means. Even if I can't succinctly describe its meaning in English or Dutch. That's a job for dictionary-editors :-)

The problem with "rife" is that it's mainly used in the context of "rife with", where it means something like "full of". Then it gets confusing because it's not really correct to say "rife" means "full". Or, "rife means full changing with to of", which is just word salad.

Re: The xkcd survey

#265

Post by tripzilch »

brianwawok wrote: post #29

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

Well I have to have at least as many colours of socks as I have colours of pants to match them with. That is blue, beige/khaki, and black.

Also a few bright flashy coloured ones, for fun.

Re: The xkcd survey

#266

Post by tripzilch »

roryokane wrote: post #252
pravj wrote: 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"].

Spoilers!

Re: The xkcd survey

#267

Post by mcv »

TylerE wrote: post #62
pierrec wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the first word in the list, hubris, refers a personality trait that the question is likely to reveal. Well played.

The order is randomized, apparently. Hubris was mid-pack for me.

At the very bottom for me.

Well, at least I don't feel so bad about not recognizing more than half of those words.

Re: The xkcd survey

#268

Post by mcv »

JoblessWonder wrote: post #124
emidln wrote: post #4

Found out that gnome 3 has some keybinding for dynamically changing screen resolution. I don't know which keybinding that is, but I found it during the mash the keyboard test.

Sigh. I hit "Enter" and it submitted the form without letting me finish. Now they will never know if I'm a dog or a cat person...

I suspect the real problem isn't so much hitting "enter" but hitting it directly after the other hand hit "tab". A text field should be able to deal with an enter.

Re: The xkcd survey

#269

Post by mcv »

unoti wrote: post #204
Twisol wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something that caused Firefox to restart and lose _all_ of my active tabs. (Got them back via sessionstore.bak, thank goodness.)

"How many tabs do you keep open on your browser" would be an interesting question, to me, to see the results on. I'm often mystified by the stories of people who keep 50+ tabs open. I've never understood why, but I guess now that I'm considering it, I'm guessing such people must base their workflows around tabs.

I have no idea how many tabs I have open, because it's a lot more than my browser is able to display. It's not so much that my workflow is based on tabs, but rather my procrastination flow. I encounter something I want to read, open it in a new tab, but then put off reading it until I forget why I wanted to read it.

Re: The xkcd survey

#270

Post by mcv »

logicallee wrote: post #85
irixusr wrote: post #66

Thermostat: Warmer or Colder? How about less intense? At the office I bring a sweater in the summer and so sometimes strip to my undershirt in the winter....

Yeah, I don't ever adjust a thermostat set by someone else. If there's a thermostat to set, I'm always happy with whatever anyone has set it to. if there isn't, there's nothing to set. There should be a choice "I never adjuust a thermostat."

I didn't answer that one. None of the answers clearly applied to me.
Post reply on HN