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33 Questions

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Re: 33 Questions

#121

Post by pit »

fat0wl wrote: post #58

The 33-question issue is a tough one for sure. I'm instead left wondering how many extra questions (35 bits? 36 bits?) it would have to be expanded to in order to produce unique results but without having to be particularly clever in producing the questions. I bet it wouldn't take as many extra as one might be inclined to think.

Good point, especially because at 33 bits, storing everyone's ID would only take about 29 gigabytes.

7,126,462,675 people * 33 bits per person / 8 bits per byte = 29,396,658,534 bytes

World population source: http://www.census.gov/popclock/

Re: 33 Questions

#122

Post by ketralnis »

_sh wrote: post #111
ketralnis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even the gender one Sure, but if you ask "do you consider yourself classically male" and "do you consider yourself classically female", you'll get the vast majority of people, so you can still eliminate large swaths of population with either of these.

The interesting nature of the problem is that you can't just 'eliminate swathes', your question must evenly divide the entire population.

I don't think that that's a requirement at all, unless you think that his second example question of a list of countries perfectly divides the population with not even a rounding error

Re: 33 Questions

#123

Post by carlob »

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…

Well gender is good enough already: "Are you female?" does not imply everyone saying no is male and is close enough to 50% that it not a big deal (2^33 leaves you with some 1.5 billion people leeway).

Re: 33 Questions

#125

Post by daleharvey »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #80
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…

It's entirely possible that the twins would not know which one was born first.

Its entirely possible the person could not know the answer to any of the questions, I dont think that really counts

Re: 33 Questions

#126

Post by jeffdavis »

Houshalter wrote: post #49

This is really interesting actually. Your entire "uniqueness" can be summed up in 33 yes or no questions, in theory.

I don't think that's quite the right interpretation. Let's say that the human population increased by a factor of 1000. Does that mean you have 10 more bits of uniqueness? You didn't change at all.

In actuality, you already had those 10 more bits of uniqueness, and people just need to ask more questions to find out which one of the many unique people you are.

This is about identification, not uniqueness.

Re: 33 Questions

#127

Post by shurcooL »

brownbat wrote: post #94
raverbashing wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's so much about these. Of course, in practice, you usually target your system to a narrow set of users at first. But yeah, if you're facebook, or work with an airline booking system, for example, you will most likely hit every single item on these lists

> you usually target your system to a narrow set of users at first [but eventually the exceptions show up] Reminded me of the College Humor sketch about security questions: http://www.collegehumor.com/embed/6936880/security-questions...

That's how I feel when sites expect me to have a phone number. I've moved on to use mode modern replacements of that communication technology (hint: it uses the internet and doesn't care where in the world you are).

Re: 33 Questions

#128

Post by repsilat »

carlob wrote: post #123
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…

Well gender is good enough already: "Are you female?" does not imply everyone saying no is male and is close enough to 50% that it not a big deal (2^33 leaves you with some 1.5 billion people leeway).

Not only does a "one-sided" question like this get you "close enough", the worldwide male/female gender disparity (around 60 million more males than females in 2010) is almost certainly larger than the worldwide intersex/trans/etc population.

A question like, "Are you a male or a Mexican female?" gets you even closer, though.

Re: 33 Questions

#129

Post by loganu »

Could you not have way more than 33 questions created, (maybe a couple hundred) but change what questions are asked based on previous answers? Use the previous answers to determine the strongest next question to ask?

If an early answer states the candidate lives in the north hemisphere, there's no point in asking them if they live on a landlocked African country... or whatever much more complicated questions could arrive.

Re: 33 Questions

#130

Post by sorahn »

deletes wrote: post #104
rmc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you weren't born in a city? The USA seems to give "city status" to many places, but not all countries follow this.

Latitude, longitude.

and timestamp, getting pretty close
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