11–20 of 169 posts
- Birthday (19~ bits)
- Rough Location (remaining bits)
And base the questions around those two, for example, where you born on a 1-15th, does the city you were born in start with the letter's a-k. This part would be an exercise in statistics, I would think.
edit: And one bit for if you were the first to be born of two identical twins =p
Very interesting thought experiment. A few random thoughts: Reminds me of Panoptic by the EFF: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ Everyone's ID would change as time passed (if they move, if they age, if they get a sex change, etc). The best questions for this are inherently "irrelevant", since "relevant" questions tend to be statistically linked. So, questions like "Was the second letter of your first girlfriend's middle…
For example, "are you below the median age at this exact second?" That is not a knowable answer, and changes by the second, but it does give you an exact 50/50 split.
Repeat N times for each split and we're getting very very close.
These need to be questions that are invariant over a lifetime: - Were you born in the northern hemisphere or southern? $2^{33}$ is sufficient for those alive now, but the human population is a dynamic function. Set a bit when the person dies?
The Northern Hemisphere has roughly 90% of the population[1]. That is far from 50% what we should be looking for. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Hemisphere
Just use: - Birthday (19~ bits) - Rough Location (remaining bits) And base the questions around those two, for example, where you born on a 1-15th, does the city you were born in start with the letter's a-k. This part would be an exercise in statistics, I would think. edit: And one bit for if you were the first to be born of two identical twins =p
Very interesting thought experiment. A few random thoughts: Reminds me of Panoptic by the EFF: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ Everyone's ID would change as time passed (if they move, if they age, if they get a sex change, etc). The best questions for this are inherently "irrelevant", since "relevant" questions tend to be statistically linked. So, questions like "Was the second letter of your first girlfriend's middle…
I don't know if there is a simple formula for the case where different questions allow different number of answers.
TODO: don't implement zombies or ghosts at this time (YAGNI principle).
Just use: - Birthday (19~ bits) - Rough Location (remaining bits) And base the questions around those two, for example, where you born on a 1-15th, does the city you were born in start with the letter's a-k. This part would be an exercise in statistics, I would think. edit: And one bit for if you were the first to be born of two identical twins =p