How Many People Will Select The Same Option As You?
Displaying poll results.63169 total votes.
The F-15 Eagle: If it's up, we'll shoot it down. If it's down, we'll blow it up. -- A McDonnel-Douglas ad from a few years ago
The F-15 Eagle: If it's up, we'll shoot it down. If it's down, we'll blow it up. -- A McDonnel-Douglas ad from a few years ago
Whoah (Score:2)
*went for 51-75%
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Funny)
Bet you feel stupid now (51-75% currently 19%)
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Insightful)
A fine warm-up for US elections this Fall, when one might ask the question: What percentage of the candidates on this ballot are not already pwnz0r3d?
Re:Whoah (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
We are not (and do not want to be) the infamous corporation located in Redmond called Microsoft.
We do not do <insert poor excuse here> errors and <insert lame excuse here> bugs.
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Funny)
Approximately 0 (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Interesting)
Such as; self-reinforcing behaviour based on the correct answer- or rather, possibly *not* self-reinforcing based on what people *thought* the correct answer would be. And whether that would end up being self-reinforcing anyway, or not.
Of course, there may be more than one correct answer; you could consider whether the categories chosen made it possible for *everyone* to be correct, and if so, what (various) pattern of voting would let everyone chose a correct answer.
So already we've got sociological, statistical and other mathematical questions from one simple poll.
But I'm sure others would rather vote on some obscure in-joke about Star Wars again.
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, you could argue that 25-50% is a reasonable choice based on the number of possible choices, but if enough people buy into that argument then 25-50% will be too low. That may make you think that 50-75% is a better choice, but then you have to assume that 50-75% of the respondants will think like you. Any determination about which answer is "best" has to rely on some theory of how others will respond.
This is somewhat related to the prisoner's dilemma, as well as what happens in voting booths--it may be that the majority of a populace actually favors one candidate, but believe that that candidate has no chance of winning, so will vote for a less desirable candidate instead to avoid wasting their vote (hey guys, let's try not to do this this election season please
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I figured #1, #6, & #7 combined HAD to make up a significant chunk of the answerees, because its popular to be contrarian here. (But I overestimated the numbers of #1 & #6, because I underestimated the intelligence of the audience to exclude those possibilities.) That left four choices, and random distrib
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Funny)
The choice "under 25%" dominates the choice "100%" (Score:5, Interesting)
But the converse is not true: Sometimes, "under 25" would win where 100 loses. So the answer "under 25" dominates the answer "100", and it's never rational to say "100".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
my fortune cookie said:
42.7% of statistics are made up on the spot.
that seems to work for me.
Re:Whoah (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Whoah (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been years, though...it might have been 2. Cool trick, nonetheless.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Ha! Trick question: you cannot appear on the ballot unless you are already pwnz0r3d.
I selected 0% (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit!
Re:I selected 0% (Score:5, Informative)
A more sophisticated contest entrant, wishing to maximize his chances of winning a prize, would think about what the majority perception of beauty is, and then make a selection based on some inference from his knowledge of public perceptions. This can be carried one step further to take into account the fact that other entrants would also be making their decision based on knowledge of public perceptions. Thus the strategy can be extended to the next order, and the next, and so on, at each level attempting to predict the eventual outcome of the process based on the reasoning of other rational agents.
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Re:I selected 0% (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I selected 0% (Score:5, Funny)
Hell with that, I just looked at the results before choosing
Superrationality (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality [wikipedia.org]
Interpretation (Score:5, Funny)
1-25% I understand statistics
26-50% I'm better than statistics
51-75% I don't need statistics
76-99% I'm an egomaniac
100% What am I voting for?
Just CowboyNeal I actively buy into slashdot mythology
Re:Interpretation (Score:5, Insightful)
The three remaining choices are unlikely to be evenly distributed, so it's a fairly good bet that one of them will get at least 25% of the vote. So lots of slashdotters (including myself) are picking the 26-50% option, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget: this isn't a mutually exclusive poll. Many multiple options could hypothetically have won. If one person voted for the Cowboy Neal option (just Cowboy Neal), nobody voted for 0%, and the 1-25% and 26-50% vote went as it has done
Game Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
The facts alone won't cut it - given 7 options with even distribution, 1-25% is the obvious choice. But we're all (for the most part) pretty good at math here so we all know that, so if we all go on numbers alone that screws us. 100% of people would choose 1-25% and we'd all be wrong.
So we have to try to predict just how cooperative everyone will be. If we were totally cooperative, we'd all choose 100% - but if one person didn't choose that, it screws the rest of us. Most of us aren't that trusting.
I chose 26-50% because I figure about half of us at best will think that hard about this one, and I really hope at least a quarter of us do. At the moment we're at 28% that voted for that category.
Now for the unexpected dynamic - how may people will check out the results and vote based on them in order to be right? That could FSCK the numbers up something royal.
Re: (Score:2)
But slashdot's technical audience (and relatively deep understanding of statistics) will throw that off. The 1-50% range will get disproportionately many votes. Therefore, 50-100% are the correct options.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
For example: for the 51-75% to be correct, 51-75% of the people voting, including you, would have to select 51-75%. There is no option that says "51%-75% of the people will select 26-50%". So if you select 51-75%, and it turns out in the end that 55% selects 26-50%, then you are still wrong because it will be physically impossible for more than 45% to select 51-75%.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Interpretation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2)
51-75% will get 35%.
I voted for 26-50%.
Re:Interpretation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm rather hoping it isn't a question of either. I'm a statistician working in psychology, and I went for 51-75%
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's way early for me, and I had to read this a couple of times before I realized you weren't talking about dipping Picaso's and Rembrant's into vats of hot oil...
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http://www.google.com/search?q=%22they+told+me%22+bush+re-elected+site%3Ainstapundit.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a [google.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Bizarre (Score:4, Interesting)
0% - Nobody agrees with anything I say so why should this poll be any different
1-25% - 1 out of 7 choices equals 14%, so this is correct if people choose randomly
26-50% - WTF? Take me to the results
51-75% - WTF? Take me to the results
76% - 99% - Most people SHOULD agree with me because I'm right, dammit
100% - I am God and everyone agrees. Those who don't, don't count
Cowboy Neal - I am really hurting for Karma and stroking Cowboy Neal's ego might help
Re:Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope quite. I think this is probably going to be the most popular individual option, and one of two where the voter will have answered the "correctly", the other being 1-25%. The 0%, 100% and the Cowboy Neal option are already out of the running by virtue of them each having more than one vote (think about it). Factor in those who click at random and hit submit (typically a bell curve distribution) and those who took a more holistic view that enough voters would think 1-25% would be too popular and voted 25-50% as possibly being able to get enough votes to be right.
Then again, if 1-25% proves too popular, then there probably won't be enough votes spare to enable 25-50% to be right either, so my guess is we'll have one of two outcomes:
Re:Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that most voters are rational:
If 1-25% was the most rational option then most voters would pick this, making it wrong. So it can't be the most rational option.
That line of reasoning led me to pick 76-99%. Of course, if less than 76% of
Re:Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, if everyone were perfectly rational, then 100% would be the correct choice, but I figured that there would be a small percentage of non-rational people (which would make 1-25% equally valid, but that seemed like a second-order result, so I plumped for the first-order 76-99% instead). Obviously, like you, I vastly overestimated the rationality of
I wonder what Mr. Spock would have chosen. The 1-25% I suspect, since even though it's logically a derivative result, it's more robust in that there other, non-rational arguments that can lead to it being correct. Now I'm perilously close to rambling, though...
Re:Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
if I vote for the outcome 1-25% then:
for any result where 76-99 would be correct, 1-25 would also be correct. And there exists outcomes where 1-25 is correct, but 76-99 is not.
So the outcome where 76-99 is correct, is a propper subset of the outcomes where 1-25 are correct, if I vote for 1-25%
Can I Change My Vote? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, when people start picking the NEW right choice, the OLD right choice becomes correct again.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, once everybody realizes that 100% is the correct answer, then 0% is also correct, for one person.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
UNLESS.....any of 3 conditions apply.
1)That one person who fails to select 100% also fails to participate in the survey altogether.
2)Our wonderful survey masters opt to invok
Re:Can I Change My Vote? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just a really BIG view of the Prisoner's Dilemma [wikipedia.org]. The correctness of your answer depends on the correctness of others.
I think it break down into several groups:
I am going to guess that the realistic pessimists and the realistic optimists will balance themselves correctly because of the nature of the audience of people who read /.
If this same poll were posted on Digg or as a Facebook Application I would bet on the unrealistic nature of the rest of the world to ruin any chance of anybody getting it right.
If Oprah were to hold the same poll on her website, I think her sheeple would vote 75-99% because they all mindlessly think the same way, but realize there are always going to be dissenters who they still need to brainwash into having their way of thinking.
Re:Can I Change My Vote? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Can I Change My Vote? (Score:5, Interesting)
So one question is: how many votes can be correct at the same time? I say five:
Another question: can all the choices be wrong at once? Yep:
Great poll!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First I would say that choices aren't wrong per se, but people choosing that option can be wrong.
So if 100% of people vote for 100%, everybody is right.
I prefer to understand your question with the precondition "there's at least one people having voted for each option"
Now, let's see
Max satisfied at the same time
What's asked isn't the final percentage, but the percentage of others voting the same.
So one single vote for 0% satisfies the condition : nobody (0%) other th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reasoning (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, as a matter of fact I tend to be "that guy" at parties. How did you know ?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Although that's not what's being asked - if too many pick the options (as is in danger of happening with option 2), then you haven't chosen a correct answer.
Re:Reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
There are three realistic possibilities, for those who are trying to choose correctly.
The 0% option is a silly one, as identified by all of the comedians early in the comments tree.
76% through to 100% are highly unlikely, and the CowboyNeal option is... a CowboyNeal option.
That leaves the 1-25%, which would be correct if everybody chose randomly (as in my parent post), and may also be correct if people try to outsmart themselves (see below).
The 26-50% would be correct if everybody chose randomly between the three plausible categories (hence 33.33% each). By rights, it should be the most chosen by sentient /.ers (if there is such a thing), which could put it over 50%, but allowing for humourists and CowboyNeal fans, I'm confident it will stay a little below 50%. That's where I voted, and at this stage I'm correct.
The 51-75% is an outside chance. If there was a general consensus on one answer, the most popular answer would probably have 51-75% of votes. But if any single category does get over 50% of votes, I don't think it will be this one.
So really, that leaves two categories that can be seriously voted for. Allowing for leakage into nonsense categories, that should still keep the 26-50% category below 50%.
trivail, only 100% has some sense (Score:2)
Results would be interesting to see over time (Score:2)
Hello, I'm a Statistician (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Most Likely Answer (Score:3, Informative)
But how are people going to answer the poll? How many people always choose the Cowboy Neal option? How many people choose randomly (7 choices, 100/7, ~14.29%, 1% - 25%)? There are going to be people who will choose 0%, 100%, or Just Cowboy Neal, so this would nudge the relative balance between 1% - 25% and 26% - 50% in favor of 1% - 25%.
I'd say my money's on 1% - 25%.
Re: (Score:2)
Just Goes To Show... (Score:2)
In this one, for example, it's trivial to show that over half the respondents are simply wrong.
(I voted "26%-50%", so at least I'm correct.)
Interestingly (Score:3, Insightful)
My head hurts.
Cheers,
Dave
Oblig. missing option (Score:5, Funny)
yup, it is the... (Score:2)
I win! (Score:2)
What did CowboyNeal vote for? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The poll is flawed!
Easy (Score:2)
The only valid answers are 1-25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-99.
Odds are that people will trend toward the middle (psychology), but lower because of the randomness. 26-50 must win the day!
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no.
The other three answers are entirely valid. They're IMPROBABLE, but quite valid.
Besides that, you just know that a handful of schmucks are gonna say 0 or 100 just to be dorks, or CowboyNeal because, hey, it's CowboyNeal!
I figured that based on that, the number of "sames" would be in the low 20 to mids, all things being average otherwise. I picked 1-25%, erring to the low side because of the other fringe options. I was close, at least
best answer changes over time (Score:2)
there are only 2 choices that are truly likely, 26-50%, and 51-75%, this was an intuitive choice...i post on slashdot quite abit, and i just guessed that between 26-75% of the voters would try to think out the options like myself
of these, i figured that 26-50% was the best b/c there were only 70 comments, so I knew the poll was new...the newness of the poll led me to think that fewer would choose like I did, between t
You will always fail at this test. (Score:2)
Mostly answers to a Rohrsach test is kind of right if you say "butterfly", "Janus-face" or "Horsehead". If you on the other hand answer with references to promiscuous features you may be wrong.
Answers related purely to computers and similar may be a good confuser. "Looks like a squashed DB9...", "That's what My
Wow... Two accurate answers! (Score:2)
But 26-50% right now has 28%, so anyone that voted there is also accurate as well!
100% had the theoretical possibility of being accurate, but, this being Slashdot, obviously wasn't.
0% is just for smart asses.
51-75% and 76-99% are both again theoretically possible, but highly doubtful.
Pick the middle option. (Score:2)
I think this poll would be relatively the same if it were posted to Digg, or even a MADD, religious, or any other forum.
Next Week, On Slashdot: (Score:2)
Why I Picked 51-75% (Score:5, Interesting)
The starting point for my reasoning was that, obviously, if everyone were perfectly rational and that fact was common knowledge [wikipedia.org] (in the technical, game-theoretic, logical sense), everyone would realize that whatever the correct answer was, everyone else (being perfectly rational) would select that option too, leaving 100% as the clear correct answer.
However, knowing that not all players in this game will even try to be rational - some will just be funny and choose 0% or Cowboyneal - that immediately eliminates 100% as a possibility. Still presuming MOST Slashdotters to be rational people though, I reasoned that most of them would also acknowledge the presence of some irrationality amongst us, and realize that everybody else realized that, and so most of us would choose 76-99%, which would thus make that option the correct answer.
But then, it dawned on me that there is likely a significant degree of randomness in Slashdot polls, both from people who just select at random and people who through some other line of reasoning selected a different option than that which I reasoned to be most reasonable, which would dilute the percentage of people who chose what I determined to be the reasonable answer. Once again imagining the remainder of Slashdot (excluding the jokesters, chaotes, etc) would reason along these same lines, I figured a good chunk of people would select the 51-75% option, so that's what I selected.
Where I seem to have failed is in accounting for all the people who would reason from the other end, assuming that the poll options would all get about equal distribution (thus 1-25%), and then realizing that some options (0%, 100%, Cowboyneal) were obvious losers, and thus that the concentration of people voting on the remaining options would actually be higher than if there were an even distribution (thus 26-50%). Of course, there remains the possibility that so many people will select those options, that they too will be false, and everyone will lose this game.
The lesson I've learned from all this? That it is unreasonable to reason from the assumption that other people are reasonable.
My philosophy (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of a SA contest (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Reminds me of a SA contest (Score:4, Informative)
Yay, found a link: http://www.jstor.org/view/00028282/sp030006/03x0205w/0 [jstor.org].
Some interesting comments. The experiments were done in three papers, with numbers between 0 and 100. Results of all three experiments, and what the theoretically rational answer would be (everybody picking 0).
Forgotten 8th option (Score:5, Funny)
Although, that option probably dropped out before the Iowa primary; it probably assumed, and rightly so, that the target market would never vote for it.
The Right Answer is 0 (Score:3, Funny)
It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
This poll is nothing but a product of a deranged imagination:-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Best. Poll. Ever. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Welcome to
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
+ 1 Vote at 0%
+ 23% (minus 2 votes) at 1-25%
+ 26% at 26-50%
+ 51% at 51-75%
- 0% at 76-99%
- 0% at 100%
+ just CowboyNeal at Just CowboyNeal.
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