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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: prodly the puffin, comments and code
Message-ID: <G4Bwso.8LH@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 15:09:59 GMT
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Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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jim crawford <pfister_@mindspring.com> wrote:
>The last was what I, personally, was going for.  Craig had his own
>agenda.  You can read his essay: "Evidence of a genetic factor for
>Pokey Aptitude in 6th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition results"
>at http://www.mindspring.com/~pfister_/study.html

Unfortunately, the author has failed to measure the correlation
between Pokey-aptitude and Prodly-aptitutde. Anecdotally, I observe
that I *hate* Pokey the Penguin (i.e. I am Pokey-inept), but
I voted Prodly a 6, thus contributing to the Prodly-apt population,
which the author misrepresents as the Pokey-apt population.

One solution would be to actively canvas the participants and
ask them whether they like Pokey, and check for correlation with
their votes.  However, I think it is likely you will find a lack
of correlation between the two.

Thus I think the preferred solution would be for you to repeat the
experiment, but this time with a game that isn't funny, to more
accurately capture Pokey-ness.

SeanB
