A useful question might revolve around language or concepts a person knows, but then this becomes a lot more difficult if the questioner doesn't know which language/concepts a person wouldn't understand (and therefore whether they could even answer the question) - and if they do know, there is a priori knowledge effectively.
33 Questions
21–30 of 169 posts
Re: 33 Questions
#22Question 1: What is the first bit in your unique 33-bit string? Question 2: What is the first bit in your unique 33-bit string? ...
I'm pretty sure you didn't mean what you wrote! But maybe I'm whooshing?
Re: 33 Questions
#2333 questions is sort of the Shannon-Hartley optimal encoding of identifying information about human beings.
That means to come up with them is identical to finding an optimal compression of identifying data.
Necessarily, as the second question already implies, for this question to correctly divide the population in half, you would have to group large amounts of small populations together, resulting in very long questions.
For example, if you'd like to make another geographical question that's independent of the second one, it would have to divide in half every population of the 6 countries you mentioned. The next question would necessarily have to divide those 12 again.
By the way, the first question you ask is already suboptimal when combined with the second question, as those countries together probably do not have a clean 50% male/female split. (if they do, you should really explain that as it's not obvious)
Re: 33 Questions
#24Just 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
That would work if people birthdays were uniformly distributed among the dates. But that's not the case.
(Most people born 100 years ago are now dead.)
Re: 33 Questions
#25Seems impossible to me, for example what question would separate two identical twins( identical in dna and when born ). And let's say you find such a question, there is no way that question would divide half of the population.
Well if you had conditional questions, you could ask who was born first.
Re: 33 Questions
#26Interesting exercise, which I'd call impossible in the given form. Imagine someone magically came up with 32 statistically independent binary indicators. Now you need to come up with the 33th question Q such that if you pick any two persons who are similar up to the 32nd bit, that single question must allow to distinguish them. Sounds hard.
Question 33 has to split any category of people formed from the first 32 questions - very awkward, as you say.
Here is a moderately-functional question 33, though:
"Are you further North than any other person who has given the same answers as you for the first 32 questions?"
Re: 33 Questions
#27Another problem not mentioned is that the questions should be about the content that does not allow for the answer to change over time. Otherwise the ID is no good.
Re: 33 Questions
#28Just 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
That would work if people birthdays were uniformly distributed among the dates. But that's not the case. (Most people born 100 years ago are now dead.)
As long as you split the distribution uniformly into categories with the same number of people, it doesn't matter that it's not uniform by date.
Re: 33 Questions
#29Interesting exercise, which I'd call impossible in the given form. Imagine someone magically came up with 32 statistically independent binary indicators. Now you need to come up with the 33th question Q such that if you pick any two persons who are similar up to the 32nd bit, that single question must allow to distinguish them. Sounds hard.
Question 33 has to split any category of people formed from the first 32 questions - very awkward, as you say. Here is a moderately-functional question 33, though: "Are you further North than any other person who has given the same answers as you for the first 32 questions?"
Excellent :) Of course there's something to be said about the ability to realistically answer reliably.
Re: 33 Questions
#30Seems impossible to me, for example what question would separate two identical twins( identical in dna and when born ). And let's say you find such a question, there is no way that question would divide half of the population.
Well if you had conditional questions, you could ask who was born first.
That question doesn't even apply since you can only ask it to two twins, not a single person.