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33 Questions

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Re: 33 Questions

#141

Post by deathanatos »

stbullard wrote: post #41

Fun to think about, but in the real world, no question neatly divides people, even the gender one. To quote Reddit's u/tailcalled[1], the exo-software/meatspace world is even less standardized than the software world: Falsehoods programmers believe about gender: http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programm... Falsehoods programmers believe about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-pr…

I dislike some of the examples of the "falsehoods programmers believe about time" because they typically aren't falsehoods, and will always hold true within the constraints of your system. Yes, time is a fickle thing that is marred by history, but in building a system, I choose a representation for the data I am storing in it. If I choose to store dates using a Gregorian calendar (because I'm following ISO-8601), then,

> Months have either 28, 29, 30, or 31 days.

Does hold true: months do have 28 to 31 days, by definition. If someone wants my Gregorian date in a different calendar system, then we must convert, but that a display issue. Otherwise, we're comparing apples and oranges, and of course all bets are off.

It's kind of like time: the hour "2 AM" never repeats itself on random politically appointed days, because I have chosen to store timestamps in UTC. If someone wants to see that timestamp in "PST" (or America/Los_Angeles), then that's a display issue that can be accommodated, but it does not suddenly violate the fact that "2 am" never repeats in UTC.

Of course, in real life, people don't know what timezone their date is stored in and things love to break randomly on DST switch-overs or leap days or the ends of leap years.

Re: 33 Questions

#143

Post by k__ »

ebiester wrote: post #136
stbullard wrote: post #41

Fun to think about, but in the real world, no question neatly divides people, even the gender one. To quote Reddit's u/tailcalled[1], the exo-software/meatspace world is even less standardized than the software world: Falsehoods programmers believe about gender: http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programm... Falsehoods programmers believe about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-pr…

I'd suggest, "Do you self-identify as female?" There are slightly more women than men, so your bifercation is "female" and male/intersex/genderqueer. I'd suggest that currently intersex and genderqueer people are currently a small enough population that it would be close to 51/49 other to self-identified woman ratio.

The question should be about biology, not stuff like gender. Biology solves this problem (most of the time)

Re: 33 Questions

#144

Post by StavrosK »

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #91
stbullard wrote: post #41

Fun to think about, but in the real world, no question neatly divides people, even the gender one. To quote Reddit's u/tailcalled[1], the exo-software/meatspace world is even less standardized than the software world: Falsehoods programmers believe about gender: http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programm... Falsehoods programmers believe about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-pr…

>... 33 'Yes' or 'No' general questions that, when answered correctly, uniquely identified everyone on the planet. I think a lot is possible with this challenge. You could compress over 8 billion yes/no questions in a single yes/no question under these rules. And if that doesn't neatly divide people, why not let the people divide themselves through unique thought? A 33-bit hash would probably collide too much. Yet th…

But, then again, so would "I am John Doe and live in 23 Maple Road, Kentucky, US, 12345, Apartment 1a", that's why the post office uses it.

Re: 33 Questions

#145

Post by octo_t »

deathanatos wrote: post #141
stbullard wrote: post #41

Fun to think about, but in the real world, no question neatly divides people, even the gender one. To quote Reddit's u/tailcalled[1], the exo-software/meatspace world is even less standardized than the software world: Falsehoods programmers believe about gender: http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programm... Falsehoods programmers believe about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-pr…

I dislike some of the examples of the "falsehoods programmers believe about time" because they typically aren't falsehoods, and will always hold true within the constraints of your system. Yes, time is a fickle thing that is marred by history, but in building a system, I choose a representation for the data I am storing in it. If I choose to store dates using a Gregorian calendar (because I'm following ISO-8601), the…

It is explicitly not a display issue.

Re: 33 Questions

#146

Post by lmm »

StavrosK wrote: post #144
blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... 33 'Yes' or 'No' general questions that, when answered correctly, uniquely identified everyone on the planet. I think a lot is possible with this challenge. You could compress over 8 billion yes/no questions in a single yes/no question under these rules. And if that doesn't neatly divide people, why not let the people divide themselves through unique thought? A 33-bit hash would probably collide too much. Yet th…

But, then again, so would "I am John Doe and live in 23 Maple Road, Kentucky, US, 12345, Apartment 1a", that's why the post office uses it.

You can't identify everyone in the world that way though. There are people with the exact same name living in the same house, and there are people who don't have a postal address.

Re: 33 Questions

#147

Post by ronaldx »

k__ wrote: post #143
ebiester wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest, "Do you self-identify as female?" There are slightly more women than men, so your bifercation is "female" and male/intersex/genderqueer. I'd suggest that currently intersex and genderqueer people are currently a small enough population that it would be close to 51/49 other to self-identified woman ratio.

The question should be about biology, not stuff like gender. Biology solves this problem (most of the time)

Not really. The stats have not been thoroughly calculated (to my knowledge) but here is an attempt: http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency

Not XX and not XY: one in 1,666 births

Klinefelter XXY: one in 1,000 births

There are other relevant cases, not necessarily measured here, like mosaicisms and chimerism.

"Do you self-identify as female?" is a more answerable question.

Re: 33 Questions

#148

Post by Intermernet »

RogerL wrote: post #132
edsrzf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe something like "Do you have more older siblings than younger siblings?" would work. One twin has to be born before the other. That question has some problems, but I feel like it could serve as the basis for a more specific question that would define how an only child or middle child would answer without introducing much bias. It would also have to define how half-siblings are counted and probably some other thi…

So you are going to burn one entire question that is entirely worthless for the vast majority of Chinese that have been born recently?

Interesting read: "One Child Policy and Arising of Man-Made Twins". http://paa2013.princeton.edu/papers/130113

Re: 33 Questions

#149

Post by k__ »

ronaldx wrote: post #147
k__ wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question should be about biology, not stuff like gender. Biology solves this problem (most of the time)

Not really. The stats have not been thoroughly calculated (to my knowledge) but here is an attempt: http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency Not XX and not XY: one in 1,666 births Klinefelter XXY: one in 1,000 births There are other relevant cases, not necessarily measured here, like mosaicisms and chimerism. "Do you self-identify as female?" is a more answerable question.

but doesn't 1:1666 mean the success rate is more than 99%?

Asking about the posession of an XX chromosome should separate the people almost 50:50, the rest is something else.

On the other hand, maybe there are just <1% people who don't identify them self with being male or female, so the questions would make no difference...

Re: 33 Questions

#150

Post by k__ »

Isn't this solvable to a degree by just asking a big amount of yes/no questions to a big amout of people and then removing all those questions that didn't identify people any further?
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