
20 questions game that works astonishingly well - dc2k08
http://en.akinator.com/
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jerf
This is a standard machine learning homework assignment for decision trees. If
you're interested in how these things work, that's where to look.

(Oh, and this is more parlor trick than clever programming. "Crowdsourcing"
works with this parlor trick well.)

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ramchip
4chan played with this a while ago, so you can find many manga/anime/game
characters, including some really obscure ones (try it!). It has everybody
from Tsukihime and Touhou...

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paulgb
If 4chan has had their way with it, I'm surprised it doesn't just answer "Rick
Astley" to everything.

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dc2k08
I am amazed at the amount of data that had to be collected for this to
correctly guess 5 for 5 of my characters. some of them were kind of obscure
too. I wonder if they didn't crowd-source it some how.

edit: with the first incorrect guess of seven, i get it. they are crowd-
sourcing the data every time it loses. brilliant.

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liuliu
A thought, can we use wikipedia info to boost up the accuracy of 20q? For that
we can have a huge near accurate data at the beginning. Considering the paper
on CIKM 2008 "Learning to Link with Wikipedia", I think that it is practical.

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paulgb
Or freebase.

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axiom
I smugly thought to myself "there's no way it would be able to figure out
Hercule Poirot, it's not even worth trying."

I'll be damned, it got it.

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earthboundkid
I beat it with Shankara, 8th c. Indian religious writer.

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whatusername
Beat it with Nynaeve al'Meara. It guessed Rand al'Thor. (rather impressively.
magic user, partial brother, fights with a sword) .. and matrim cauthon (no
magic, brothers/sisters, no sword, no beard)

these always impress me. (even if I do understand some of the math behind it)

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Tichy
Unusable for me because of the excessive amount of advertising on the site. Is
it really that much better than 20q.net?

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rms
The people from 20q.net manufactured a great physical device for playing the
game. Sold for about $15 at Walmart, makes an exceptional gift for hard to
shop for people. On eBay for $12 shipped... [http://cgi.ebay.com/20-Q-Game-I-
can-read-your-mind_W0QQitemZ...](http://cgi.ebay.com/20-Q-Game-I-can-read-
your-mind_W0QQitemZ370113631968QQcmdZViewItem)

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mynameishere
I fooled it with Hugo Simpson, then screwed it up when I clicked on some other
Hugo during the "teach me" phase. Oh well.

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psyklic
I tried "Cory Booker," mayor of Newark (recently on The Colbert Report). It
asked me the same questions several times but worded differently, and in the
end it guessed Obama (though not surprising since Booker isn't as famous).

<http://www.20q.net> always amazed me.

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jrmurad
After the 20th question, it guessed Bertrand Russel when I was thinking of
Thomas Paine who was in the list after I told it the guess was incorrect.

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glenstein
I thought of Dagny Taggart, it guessed Howard Roark.

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CoreyN
I thought of John Galt and it guessed Howard Roark.

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tremendo
I am stunned. The questions were mostly way off and got only marginally closer
in the last 4-5, then came the correct answer: Pancho Villa.

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vlad
I tried searching for Paul Graham. I got Linus Torvalds, then Sergey Brin,
then Drew Curtis, then Will Wright. Not bad company.

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psyklic
It would be better if it didn't always respond "Too many users" -- AFTER
having me fill out the "who i am" form.

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dc2k08
yeah it is annoying but once you have put in your stats, you can just keep
pressing the start game button you get a spot within in a minute which
admittedly is an aeon in net-time though.

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ksvs
Didn't seem that great. It didn't guess any of my choices (Bede, Vita
Sackville-West, and Diocletian).

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globalrev
I beat it with The good in the good the bad and the ugly. He answered Leon.

It is timing out all the time, unberable.

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pavelludiq
For me it guessed Hamlet, Bin Laden, Leonardo, Che Guevara and Woz, but
couldn't think of Buddha.

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dc2k08
wow@woz. for me it got: mother theresa, richard branson, bowie, tarantino but
stumbled on dylan for tom waits. it will guess your cousin too.

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pavelludiq
It guessed Randal Munroe! A warning to chronic procrastinators such as me,
this is addictive!

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a-priori
Before it started saying it's too busy, I stumped it twice: once with B'Elanna
Torres and once with Kaylee (Firefly)

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patio11
I stumped it with Kaylee, too, and decided to add the question "Is your
character an engineer?" Which it already had in the database. Then it asked me
to evaluate the engineerness of 20 characters... and of the ones I recognized,
most would be hard to differentiate from Kaylee by other questions.

That is pretty freaking slick, I've got to say. I don't even remember 20q.net
having that.

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cool-RR
It's very cool, but 20q (which is very similar) has been around for at least 5
years.

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dgordon
I used Jose Raul Capablanca, the third world chess champion. It wasn't even
close.

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tdavis
It didn't know who Dirk Pitt was. Universal litmus test for intelligence fails
;)

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jmtame
My thought: aladin / The answer returned: harry potter

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vulpes
Entourage is underrepresented :)

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ohxten
It couldn't think of Ron Paul.

Fail! ;)

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glenstein
I thought of Ron Paul, and I could tell by the questions that it already knew
by the 5th or 6th question. It can guess Ron Paul. You answered a question
incorrectly.

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sebg
stumped it with tony the tiger. it guessed lassie.

