20 questions game that works astonishingly well

http://en.akinator.com/

by dc2k08 • 18 years ago

25 37 18 years ago

en.akinator.com

dc2k084• 18 years ago

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.

liuliu• 18 years ago

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.

paulgb2• 18 years ago

Or freebase.

pavelludiq2• 18 years ago

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

dc2k084• 18 years ago

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.

pavelludiq2• 18 years ago

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

ramchip• 18 years ago

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...

paulgb2• 18 years ago

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

psyklic2• 18 years ago

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

dc2k084• 18 years ago

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.

Tichy• 18 years ago

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

dc2k084• 18 years ago

just tried 20q.net and i can say it does make a lot better guesses and it is also not categorised.

rms• 18 years ago

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...

jerf• 18 years ago

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.)

psyklic2• 18 years ago

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.

vulpes• 18 years ago

Entourage is underrepresented :)

ohxten• 18 years ago

It couldn't think of Ron Paul.

Fail! ;)

glenstein2• 18 years ago

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.

jrmurad• 18 years ago

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.

axiom• 18 years ago

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.

earthboundkid• 18 years ago

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

whatusername• 18 years ago

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)

tdavis• 18 years ago

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

mynameishere• 18 years ago

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

ksvs• 18 years ago

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

jmtame• 18 years ago

My thought: aladin / The answer returned: harry potter

tremendo• 18 years ago

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.

vlad• 18 years ago

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

globalrev• 18 years ago

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.

sebg• 18 years ago

stumped it with tony the tiger. it guessed lassie.

glenstein2• 18 years ago

I thought of Dagny Taggart, it guessed Howard Roark.

CoreyN• 18 years ago

I thought of John Galt and it guessed Howard Roark.

dgordon• 18 years ago

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

cool-RR• 18 years ago

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

20 questions game that works astonishingly well

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