When I first read about Hunch’s Twitter Predictor game, I was pretty skeptical. The game asks you to put in your Twitter user name and based on who you follow and who you are followed by, it predicts how you will answer questions on Hunch. Then I used it. It’s awesome. Well, pretty awesome.
Out of 35 questions I answer, Hunch correctly predicted by my answer to 32 of them and was only wrong with 3, 91% correct. And these aren’t just “yes” or “no” question, some have several possible answers. In fact, the game got so many right that at first I was sure it was all fake and they were just saying they were going to pick what I eventually did. Then I noticed the “take a peek” link, which tells you before you answer the question how you’re going to answer it.
I also wondered if Hunch was simply predicting how I’d answer based on other Hunch questions I had answered on my account. But actually, the game works even if you’re logged out of your Hunch account.
So yes, the predictor made by new Hunch employee Ben Gleitzman (a former Googler) is very accurate. But then I noticed something. As I played it again in another browser, the game asked the exact same questions. And the first question is always about my age range. So this is likely one of the keys to how the predictor works. Another friend had a series of questions that made it clear she was a woman — likely another key predictor.
I would bet the game is quickly scanning your Twitter followers and getting some obvious topical data, such as age range and sex. Then it uses the aggregate Hunch data that the service has collected over the past several months.
Still, it’s a pretty cool idea. And a great way to show off the data Hunch is collecting. The team answers more about the game here.
The first question it predicted wrong for me was “Have you ever ridden a Segway?” Indeed, I have.
I like Hunch but this I’m not impressed by…
- is today your birthday.
No. – Hunch it got it right.
- are you allergic to peanuts
No. – Hunch got it right
- are you an orphan
No. – Hunch got it right.
- do i believe the world will end in 2012
No – Hunch got it right.
Bravo.
Zee: agreed. Related: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103512
I get redirected to the homepage. Probably because I’m in the UK
Agree.
Agree, what a joke. There is no way for anyone to answer the wrong question and not the one Hunch has answered correctly. Plain statistics behind it.
“On average, how much time do you spend styling your hair each day?”. Are you kidding me? How many men will spend over 10 minutes to style their hair?
And the ones that it (Hunch) cannot predict are
the 50-50 ones. It will be either this or that.
I just entered a random name there and it has nothing to do with it.
Agreed. Hunch got the inane, easily predictable ones right and the one question that was actually important (allergy related) wrong.
Cute but useless.
This remind me of the family guy episode were Peter believes that he is psychic! *There is cursing in this clip*
The only questions it asked me had odds of 0.1% of me saying yes… not impressed. What a stupid tool.
This is completely unimpressive.
Enter someone else’s twitter account who is nothing like you and it will still get 90% of your answers right.
Answer the questions with @oprah as your account. You’ll see what I mean.
I think that around 30% or so of the questions (i am being modest) are going to be answered with NO by almost everybody..And hunch gets a +1 .
If i make a quiz now with 20 questions and 10 are something like “Do you have 3 legs?” and then i say that i got 50% of the answers right then I don’t see a smart system here..
But perhaps I am wrong…
This is an impossibly lame “game”.
But it is a clever ploy to get people to volunteer information about themselves.
Bravo, Hunch.
This is such a stupid thing… most the questions have veryyyy obvious answers that 99% of people will answer the same way…
Not impressive… at all.
All they know of me now is that I was stupid enough to try it…
“All they know of me now is that I was stupid enough to try it…”
+1
+2
They don’t know that – just that someone used your user name in the test.
Wow… this was the most useless Twitter application ever.
“Do you feel like women are inferior to men?”
Jeez… could you make this an easier to guess question.
totally lame. the ones that it got wrong were the ones where i differ from the norm, so, basically it has no insight about me. is it my birthday? 1 in 365 chance it is, so obviously it “guesses” no. and of course now they have a bunch of information recorded about how i answered it. utterly useless.
Seems like it has the same sort of logic that 20 Questions does.
http://www.20q.net/
Either the game is awesome, or you’re too predictable.
Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect
Interesting! I’ll give this a try later… :)
Unintelligent spam bot is unintelligent.
ditto
I thought that it was impressive.
This is kinda freaky.
unimpressive. All the answers are based on probability. For eg:
Are you an orphan ?
- I guess 95% of the population are not
Are you a licensed pilot ?
- 99% are not licensed
duhhh
unimpressive. All the answers are based on probability. For eg:
Are you an orphan ?
- I guess 70% of the population are not
Are you a licensed pilot ?
- 99% people are not licensed
duhhh
- Do you feel like your wasting your time? Yes
Yes – Hunch is right
:)
I said my Twitter username was “ParisLemon” and Hunch asked “Are you gullible and impressed by very lame things?”
“Yes”
“Hunch got it right!”
Hooray for technology.
Are you a orphan?
No
Hunch was right!
Are you allergic to peanuts?
No
Hunch was right!
Do you believe in something really stupid that would never happen?
No
Hunch was right!
Are you allergic to peanuts?
No, again.
Do you daydream?
What the fuck seriously.
I got the same results. Such a cool app
MG Siegler, I guess you didn’t pay attention in statistics class. This thing asks questions that almost 95% of people fall into… and gauging by the comments it asks the same set of questions.
Woow that’s pretty impressive if it realy works. I don’t belive in prediction that much but I will give it a try to see. I’ll post the result after.
how about predicting what people want – http://www.cache.me
Lame induction technique…this sucks…not impressive.
http://travellersmantra.com/2010/03/12/royal-reservations-part-ii/
This is a load of BS.
I ran it twice, once with my real Twitter name and once with a bogus name, and got almost identical results.
Practically all the questions are “predicted” by Hunch based on statistical probabilities, and the ones in which I was statistically different from the vast majority of people, Hunch got it wrong (like, I DID ride a Segway, and Hunch predicted I didn’t; I was born in a different countries than both my parents, and Hunch predicted I was botn in the same country of at least one parent; I served as an officer in the Army and Hunch guessed I didn’t).
And like you guessed, MG, after determining your gender (which is REALLY easy to do), hunch gets a lot of further questions right, for example:
* Do you spend more than 10 minutes doing your hair?
* Is Tom Cruise crazy hot, or just plain crazy?
Come on.
Amit is absolutely right. Come on people. Wake up and start thinking a bit.
The only interesting part of this is how well it nailed political opinions.
I think it uses continual refinement, it gets more accurate as you answer more questions. its only using your twitter feed as a base
Was MC Siegler paid by Hunch to write this article to promote their lame site?
I have a hunch that the answer is Yes.
MG What’s the going rate? Just interested to see could I afford an article
Oh wow, this is some amazing stuff dude.
Lou
http://www.web-invisibility.at.tc
This is some incredible technology!