Meta-quiz Meme

[jack]

Related to several places, most recently stolen from God Plays Dice here, from a book. The point being not what people know, but how good they are at knowing what they know.

"For each of the following ten questions, give a range that you are 90 percent confident contains the correct answer. Your goal is to get exactly nine of these right[1]. Yes, I know that sounds weird! But the point is that if you get all ten right, you're proabably underestimating your own abilities to predict things. If you get eight or less, you're probably overestimating them."

Assign a range to each question in a comment. Look up the answers and see how many you got right. Post it if you like. GodPlaysDice said to repost it if you liked, and to email him the answers (izzycat AT gmail DOT com) if you like; I assume he wishes to informally gauge something.

Here are the questions:
1. How old was Martin Luther King, Jr. at death?
2. What is the length of the Nile River?
3. How many countries belong to OPEC?
4. How many books are there in the Old Testament?
5. What is the diameter of the moon?
6. What is the weight of an empty Boeing 747-400?
7. In what year was Mozart born?
8. What is the gestation period of an Asian elephant?
9. What is the air distance from London to Tokyo?
10. What is the depth of the deepest known point in the ocean?

Although what interested me was that it simply meant you could have a quiz where people who don't know much about it (or who know too much about it) can play too. I'm curious to see how big the ranges are -- mine are embarrassingly wide, generally between a factor of two to a factor of ten, though of course, I know several much more precisely now.

[1] It would be more precise to say "and not know which one you got wrong". The idea being you should be pretty certain about all of them, not guess "0-1000,000" on nine and "-315.17" on the last one :)

Comments

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

That is indeed a really interesting exercise. My reaction to a lot of those it "argh, I have no idea!" but that doesn't really matter - it just means I have to give a big range.

OK, then:
1. 35-48
2. 300-700 miles
3. 4-10
4. 39 (This is the only one I know the actual answer to, so I can't satisfy the "90% confidence" requirement :)
5. 1000-3000 miles
6. 30-100 tonnes
7. 1780-1820
8. 9-18 months
9. 4000-6000 miles
10. 1000 feet-10 miles (blarg, really no idea)

Some are definitely harder than others. Most of the questions reminded me of the stereotypical "how many petrol stations in the country"-type interview questions. You can't expect to get those quite right, but you can estimate various things and multiply them together and get a plausible answer. But for some of them (like the last one) I really felt I had nothing to go on.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

And based on the correct answers in your post:
1. Correct
2. No, way out
3. No
4. Correct
5. Correct
6. Correct
7. No
8. No (I knew it was long, but underestimated quite how long)
9. No
10. Correct (although your post says "11000 mi", so I thought I must be way out, but then realised that was a typo for "11000m")

So, 5/10. Yeah, I should have given bigger ranges.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

although your post says "11000 mi", so I thought I must be way out, but then realised that was a typo for "11000m")

Yeah, my brain was confused between three different systems of measurement, and came out with that, which is significantly further than the distance all the way to the other side of the earth :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

This is the only one I know the actual answer to, so I can't satisfy the "90% confidence" requirement :)

:) Yeah, it's unfortunate that the one people are most likely to know precisely is also the one you can't give a more precise answer to if you want to :)