Meta-quiz Meme
Jul. 13th, 2008 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackRelated 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 :)
"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 :)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-13 02:59 pm (UTC)1. 35-50
2. Um, 1,000-5,000?? It's very long, put it that way.
3. 10-30
4. 39
5. Um, OK, it's a lot smaller than Earth so... let's say 800-3,000
6. I'm crap at weights. 1-100 tonnes
7. 1756
8. 15-25 months (though I think it's just under 2 yrs, but could be wrong)
9. I think we're talking somewhere near half the Earth's circumference, and that's about 20,000 miles, so I'll say 7,000-12,000 miles
10. God, I've no idea. I don't even know what to do it in. Feet? Let me see, I suppose there's potential for it to be as the highest point on land is high, IYSWIM. I'll guess 5,000-20,000 feet.
*goes to check answers*
Oh, how cool, I got them all. But only by seriously hedging my bets on 6 and 10, though! It was mostly just logical guessing, though I knew two of the answers exactly.
It strikes me that it would be possible to do some sort of scaling thing with this to give you quite a precise score on how you did, which would be cool. And indeed would remind me of the Professionals episode I was watching last night with old computers and assessments of agents' mental agility.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-14 11:03 am (UTC):) Feel free to give months and days if you feel the need :)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-14 11:04 am (UTC)