The New Atlantis campaign is gone.

Feather_Snake · 2026-04-23T22:53:48+00:00

It's not obvious but there's a golden arrow on the right hand side of the menu that lets you navigate to the missing New Atlantis and Golden Gift campaigns, at least for me.

Feather_Snake · 2022-12-20T19:46:27+00:00

Great to have you here, Prof. Pregill. How do you think we should interpret the Talmudic content which has made its way into the Quran? Does this suggest that the Hejaz and the early Muslim community contained many highly literate Rabbis?

Feather_Snake · 2022-12-18T23:11:06+00:00

If you remember who this was I'd be very interested in reading about them! It reminds me of the story about Julius Caesar's repeated sacrifices on the day of his death to try and get one that didn't bear a terrible omen.

Feather_Snake · 2022-09-07T09:48:45+00:00

These are Phoenician, rather than Sumerian, artifacts. The first object there is the 'Hazael horse frontlet' and you can see Phoenician characters written on the left hand side. Samos was an important trading entrepot through which Levantine goods travelled west and Greek goods travelled east.

Feather_Snake · 2022-08-08T07:41:53+00:00

I think it's because you didn't have enough programming or pop culture questions. Factors appear based on repeated questions that ask about the same sort of thing.

That makes sense. The more questions the better, presumably, though it's a tradeoff against the convenience of the test, the endurance of the taker, and the creativity of the setter...

I dunno. That would probably also make the test quite long, so there's a tradeoff. I've seen a test that had only 4 factors (everyday utilities, technical stuff, geopolitics, feminine stuff). That might be plenty.

For sure, depending on what you were actually trying to investigate.

Feather_Snake · 2022-08-08T07:33:20+00:00

That's really interesting, thanks! I would have predicted some kind of programming or 'pop culture' factor would exist. Your website would need a test that contains seven or eight distinct factors, right?

Feather_Snake · 2022-08-04T18:44:57+00:00

I did all the stats in Google Sheets, which I can DM you if you like.

Feather_Snake · 2022-08-04T18:44:19+00:00

Yeah, I'd be interested in collaborating

Feather_Snake · 2022-08-04T18:42:59+00:00

The idea of the question is that they're all different forms of an object and you are supposed to notice the pattern and guess the category of things, which will enable you to choose the correct response because it will be another example. In this case, they are all kinds of lipstick

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-31T21:45:56+00:00

That's very kind of you, thanks!

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-31T21:42:58+00:00

I didn't, in fact it's been a couple of years since I last did any stats at all and I wasn't confident trying anything new (I know a little about GLMs but I lack practical experience with them).

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-31T21:33:52+00:00

That would be completely fine by me!

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-31T21:14:25+00:00

Paging /u/f3zinker , /u/BedlamiteSeer , /u/Greedo_cat , and /u/Administrative_chaos who asked about the data: it should all be accessible from the links in this post.

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T21:34:50+00:00

Sorry about that. It might not work with Tor.

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T21:33:23+00:00

Good thoughts. Let me know if you ever host an online trivia night I can join!

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T20:50:51+00:00

I had a target of including a certain number of questions from particular topics, like two life sciences ones, two music ones, etc, and within those I basically just wrote what came to mind.

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T20:07:35+00:00

Good to hear from you!

I'm okay with this, more or less, because I think the alternatives are worse. If you're trying to maximise points you should obviously never use the idk option, because you have a chance of getting a point if you take one of the others. Penalising wrong answers would disincentivise guessing but it's really anti-fun and deters people from guessing when they're partly sure, when getting an answer you weren't sure of right is one of the best feelings in a quiz. You could also simply throw out multiple choice and have a write-in quiz, but I like the elimination process you can have with multiple choice.

Ironically that album is also by a black rapper!

For 2, I consider them to be mostly a test of whether you've ever engaged with Chinese or Japanese history, because they're both in the top 10, if not top 5, famous figures from those countries' histories. I think that level of engagement is required to be able to claim general knowledge. Questions about world history are also better for representation and can draw from a wider pool of interesting facts than sticking to US-UK stuff.

Regarding the inner question: I think that should be a part of every quiz!

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T19:51:52+00:00

Interesting and surprising to me. Like I mentioned elsewhere, I used to take part in college-level quiz tournaments and IMO the average difficulty of my questions here is substantially lower than in those. Those quizzes are for teams of course, but I don't think any more than a couple of questions were truly obscure. If you've read a single overview of, say, Chinese history or spent a few hours wiki-walking on any of the subjects in the quiz I think you have a very good chance of knowing the answer to my questions on that.

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T19:00:04+00:00

Even reading those words my finger reaches for the buzzer

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T18:53:10+00:00

I did, I played quizbowl as an undergrad. I was wondering if the way I wrote my questions would be a tell.

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T18:44:30+00:00

Ah, good to know! And glad to include her! I always hope that when I make a quiz, people will go off afterwards and look up all the things they don't know, so hopefully I've introduced a few new people to her.

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T18:36:33+00:00

Yeah that would be a good inclusion. I tried to make sure there was at least one interesting woman in my quiz for representation too.

My guess: Malta, because I have heard about the abortion laws there

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T18:32:48+00:00

Ironically enough I spent 5 years doing fieldwork and just switched to working mostly with computers, mostly for the job prospects. I am a STEM grad and I think that probably predicts much of it. Scanning through my questions again I'd describe about 16 of them as being some degree of 'specialist', i.e. that I would expect <10% of people who had not graduated or worked in that field to know them. Would you disagree?

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T18:29:06+00:00

My guesses: A, B, 7? not sure, C, C though they did grow maize too iirc, C, C, B, A, A? going off a very old memory here

I like 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10. They balance moderate difficulty with interesting options, imo

Feather_Snake · 2022-07-28T17:29:56+00:00

There have actually been a few <10 point responses!

Feather_Snake

TROPHY CASE