6 ms·

Hacker News Headlines (game)

greenwallnorway 10mo ago
I average a score in the range 1500-2000 (out of 2500). I imagine those who spend more time on hn will ace it.
- ivanjermakov 10mo ago
  I got 2000ish, but I remember seeing 3/5 headlines. Perhaps I should spend less time there...
- tptacek 10mo ago
  It helps a lot just to have an intuition for what a big article is here. The slider starts at ~1500 votes, which is an insanely successful story. You can get a strong score just by guessing 400 for everything, nudging up +100 for things you remember being popular and down -100 for things that seem obscure.
  - greenwallnorway 10mo ago
    Yea - I didn't think too long on how to calculate points well. Is there a more balanced strategy? Identifying some of the truly high-scoring articles (>1000) should be rewarding, and 200 vs 400 points is a pretty big difference on hn
    - tptacek 10mo ago
      A "replacement-level" front page story is ~200 votes, +/- 50. If you're drawing just from the front page, and not from a deliberately weighted set of successful vs. marginal posts, most stories should be below 400. (It's weird to say this but I'm not nerdy enough to have actually worked this out with data; it's just intuition from spending time here.)
    - codechicago277 10mo ago
      Could split the stories into buckets and then randomly sample from each bucket. Most stories are small, so they’re currently overrepresented in the sampling.
codechicago277 10mo ago
I think you need to adjust the variation of scores, I got 1650 actually guessing, then realized most of the scores were low and got 1800 by just always guessing 239
- greenwallnorway 10mo ago
  Ah! Good idea. Hurts replayability though, since we probably get not more than one 1000 pointer each week.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    Just change the range of scores. If you're not going to deliberately weight the set of stories to include outliers, then the whole game is really played in the 150-400 range anyways, so make that the slider.
  - Yizahi 10mo ago
    Include some 0 to 4 score posts with interesting headlines. Should be pretty funny I think :) For example: Rubin Observatory Discovers Surprise 'Tail' on Iconic Galaxy - 2 Vera Rubin's primary mirror gets its first reflective coating - 157
- unsnap_biceps 10mo ago
  I got 2038 by just going with the default 373 for all 5
jtrn 10mo ago
Anchoring!!! If the range has nothing to do with the items in question, just have simple number input. Tested multiple times and all items were below default / midpoint.
- greenwallnorway 10mo ago
  ui idea: show the distribution over the slider
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
BrenBarn 10mo ago
Why is the score range 239-1000?
anonymousiam 10mo ago
First try: Hacker News Headlines Score: 2,003 / 2,500 pts R1: 684 (guessed 429) - 0.63x - 333 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722639 R2: 298 (guessed 239) - 0.80x - 413 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45783074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45783074 R3: 273 (guessed 239) - 0.88x - 445 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736461 R4: 288 (guessed 479) - 1.66x - 321 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589715 R5: 244 (guessed 249) - 1.02x - 491 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45602124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45602124 Play at: https://nbanmp.github.io/claude-web/projects/hn-oracle/ https://nbanmp.github.io/claude-web/projects/hn-oracle/

I average a score in the range 1500-2000 (out of 2500). I imagine those who spend more time on hn will ace it.

ivanjermakov 10mo ago
I got 2000ish, but I remember seeing 3/5 headlines. Perhaps I should spend less time there...
tptacek 10mo ago
It helps a lot just to have an intuition for what a big article is here. The slider starts at ~1500 votes, which is an insanely successful story. You can get a strong score just by guessing 400 for everything, nudging up +100 for things you remember being popular and down -100 for things that seem obscure.
- greenwallnorway 10mo ago
  Yea - I didn't think too long on how to calculate points well. Is there a more balanced strategy? Identifying some of the truly high-scoring articles (>1000) should be rewarding, and 200 vs 400 points is a pretty big difference on hn
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    A "replacement-level" front page story is ~200 votes, +/- 50. If you're drawing just from the front page, and not from a deliberately weighted set of successful vs. marginal posts, most stories should be below 400. (It's weird to say this but I'm not nerdy enough to have actually worked this out with data; it's just intuition from spending time here.)
  - codechicago277 10mo ago
    Could split the stories into buckets and then randomly sample from each bucket. Most stories are small, so they’re currently overrepresented in the sampling.

I think you need to adjust the variation of scores, I got 1650 actually guessing, then realized most of the scores were low and got 1800 by just always guessing 239

greenwallnorway 10mo ago
Ah! Good idea. Hurts replayability though, since we probably get not more than one 1000 pointer each week.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  Just change the range of scores. If you're not going to deliberately weight the set of stories to include outliers, then the whole game is really played in the 150-400 range anyways, so make that the slider.
- Yizahi 10mo ago
  Include some 0 to 4 score posts with interesting headlines. Should be pretty funny I think :) For example: Rubin Observatory Discovers Surprise 'Tail' on Iconic Galaxy - 2 Vera Rubin's primary mirror gets its first reflective coating - 157
unsnap_biceps 10mo ago
I got 2038 by just going with the default 373 for all 5

jtrn 10mo ago

Anchoring!!! If the range has nothing to do with the items in question, just have simple number input. Tested multiple times and all items were below default / midpoint.

greenwallnorway 10mo ago
ui idea: show the distribution over the slider

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

BrenBarn 10mo ago

Why is the score range 239-1000?

anonymousiam 10mo ago

First try: Hacker News Headlines Score: 2,003 / 2,500 pts R1: 684 (guessed 429) - 0.63x - 333 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722639 R2: 298 (guessed 239) - 0.80x - 413 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45783074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45783074 R3: 273 (guessed 239) - 0.88x - 445 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736461 R4: 288 (guessed 479) - 1.66x - 321 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589715 R5: 244 (guessed 249) - 1.02x - 491 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45602124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45602124 Play at: https://nbanmp.github.io/claude-web/projects/hn-oracle/ https://nbanmp.github.io/claude-web/projects/hn-oracle/