5 ms·

The US Department of Defense isn't sure where Damascus is: statistical proof

46 points by verve 13y ago

chatman 13y ago
> Mac users are much worse than Linux users . I guess GNU/Linux users are smarter than everyone else across the world :-)
incision 13y ago
This reminds of a situation years ago where a friend of mine downloaded a bunch of archive material from a certain security disclosure site while at work. Within a day the site had proudly proclaimed that they were being "investigated" by his agency.
tingletech 13y ago
"Texans were slightly worse than everyone else - 49.3% got it correct compared to the world average of 52.5%." Let's see the baysean credible intervals... sounds like that might not be statistically significant.
eli 13y ago
I know it's tongue in cheek, but that's a pretty unfair headline.
Millennium 13y ago
Within 100 miles: not as great as I'd like, but I do take some pride in the fact that I got inside Syria (my guess turned out to be right around Homs). That said, is it really appropriate to be using a physical map to find political entities?
- aet 13y ago
  No, I couldn't even locate where I live on that map. :)
ddebernardy 13y ago
Their app sucks. A geographical map without the political boundaries makes little sense, and their zooming blows to a point that I'm surprised anyone bothers with it. Show me how many US citizens can place Kansas City or Atlanta on the same map.
curveship 13y ago
I knew exactly where Damascus was, but they put me down as barely making it inside their 200 mile cutoff, at 163 miles away. I think this is more about bad UI design. I got a hand cursor rather than a pointer, making it difficult to be precise, and I never noticed the zoom logo in the upper left. Plus, with only 65 DOD responses, how significant is a deviation of only 4.5% from the norm?
- Tloewald 13y ago
  I cheated and still got it wrong -- it's too hard to click on their map (I doubt I was any more accurate at clicking on Arlington, VA where I live). The Linux users doing so well against Mac users thing was interesting. I wonder if it has to do with how it displays in browsers. Also -- did the measure the delay in responses (e.g. how many people went and googled it before clicking?)
  - lhc- 13y ago
    I used the mousewheel to zoom in, making it much easier. I still was 140miles away though.
kerpal 13y ago
This seems kind of absurd. What are they doing, looking at an IP block belonging to the DoD and then laying claim that the DoD doesn't know their geography because a couple of people on their network did their quiz incorrectly? Give me a break.
VLM 13y ago
The unanswered meta question is why it should matter. They went into the game knowing they were doing a meaningless internet quiz, so its going to be hard to abstract how intensely groups goof off when they're goofing off (or propensity to cheat in a meaningless internet quiz using an adjacent google maps tab), vs actual knowledge. Oh well, result were reported to 3 sig figs using a whopping dozens of samples, so it must be meaningful, LOL. When you know the denominator is extremely small, you can play a math game trying to find small integer fractions that divide out to about .493 and so on.

46 points by verve 13y ago

> Mac users are much worse than Linux users . I guess GNU/Linux users are smarter than everyone else across the world :-)

incision 13y ago

This reminds of a situation years ago where a friend of mine downloaded a bunch of archive material from a certain security disclosure site while at work. Within a day the site had proudly proclaimed that they were being "investigated" by his agency.

tingletech 13y ago

"Texans were slightly worse than everyone else - 49.3% got it correct compared to the world average of 52.5%." Let's see the baysean credible intervals... sounds like that might not be statistically significant.

eli 13y ago

I know it's tongue in cheek, but that's a pretty unfair headline.

Millennium 13y ago

Within 100 miles: not as great as I'd like, but I do take some pride in the fact that I got inside Syria (my guess turned out to be right around Homs). That said, is it really appropriate to be using a physical map to find political entities?

aet 13y ago
No, I couldn't even locate where I live on that map. :)

ddebernardy 13y ago

Their app sucks. A geographical map without the political boundaries makes little sense, and their zooming blows to a point that I'm surprised anyone bothers with it. Show me how many US citizens can place Kansas City or Atlanta on the same map.

curveship 13y ago

I knew exactly where Damascus was, but they put me down as barely making it inside their 200 mile cutoff, at 163 miles away. I think this is more about bad UI design. I got a hand cursor rather than a pointer, making it difficult to be precise, and I never noticed the zoom logo in the upper left. Plus, with only 65 DOD responses, how significant is a deviation of only 4.5% from the norm?

Tloewald 13y ago
I cheated and still got it wrong -- it's too hard to click on their map (I doubt I was any more accurate at clicking on Arlington, VA where I live). The Linux users doing so well against Mac users thing was interesting. I wonder if it has to do with how it displays in browsers. Also -- did the measure the delay in responses (e.g. how many people went and googled it before clicking?)
- lhc- 13y ago
  I used the mousewheel to zoom in, making it much easier. I still was 140miles away though.

kerpal 13y ago

This seems kind of absurd. What are they doing, looking at an IP block belonging to the DoD and then laying claim that the DoD doesn't know their geography because a couple of people on their network did their quiz incorrectly? Give me a break.

VLM 13y ago

The unanswered meta question is why it should matter. They went into the game knowing they were doing a meaningless internet quiz, so its going to be hard to abstract how intensely groups goof off when they're goofing off (or propensity to cheat in a meaningless internet quiz using an adjacent google maps tab), vs actual knowledge. Oh well, result were reported to 3 sig figs using a whopping dozens of samples, so it must be meaningful, LOL. When you know the denominator is extremely small, you can play a math game trying to find small integer fractions that divide out to about .493 and so on.