Thursday 23 April 2015

On Twitter a picture costs 23 characters

We were back in the UK ths week for a short stay, and obviously took in a quiz (or several). Here's one highlight!

Your target this week:

1+ out of 2: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The programmer
4) The misandrist
5) The saxophonist

The ones that got away
1) 2 point question: for one point each, name the members of this double act.


The answers


Our excuse


How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 point or more)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative question
1) Continuing the theme, rendered in Lego behind the button below are the seven party leaders who featured in that big TV debate which everyone said looked like a gameshow. Your task is to identify which party (not the leaders' names specifically) each of these figures is representing. 5 out of 7 gets you 1 point, while a perfect score gets you 2! (And in case you're wondering, I have jumbled the order from how they appeared on stage and the background colours aren't too much help.)



The answers


How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!

Thursday 16 April 2015

The Trans-Canada Highway passes through all ten of the country's provinces

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 7: Well done, you beat us and we'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The rich person otherkin
4) The DJ-man
5) The secret German

The ones that got away
1) Which Emilio Estevez movie featuring haunted trucks is the only film directed by Stephen King?
2) What city lies at the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railway? (You must spell it correctly to get the point.)
3) Who are/were the two longest-reigning - but non-royal - country leaders since 1900? You need both for the point.
4) Which of these is not a real baseball player: Johnny Dickshot, Ten Million, Cannonball Titcomb, Ropey Todd, or Chickenwolf?
5) What is the name of the music-streaming service purchased and advertised by Jay-Z?
6) 2 point question: Dili is the capital of which country?

The answers


Our excuses


How did you do? Would you have beaten us and helped us win (1 point or more)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions
1) Occurring in 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2001, which two-word, alliterative sporting alternative to the Olympics featured in the second Mighty Ducks film?
2) Which musical features a character based on a Trans-Siberian train called Turnov the Russian?
3) Bhumibol Adulyadej is currently the world's longest reigning monarch, closing in on 69 years as king of which country?
4) In 1908 New York Giants rookie Fred Merkle made a notorious mistake in a baseball game against the Chicago Cubs. What slightly rude five-letter word for a blunder is used to describe this incident?
5) Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter's stage name developed from which (not rude) five-letter word?
6) Timor-Leste ultimately derives from two different words for 'East', although at the UN they're known as Timor-Leste rather than East Timor. There are three UN member states whose names as they are presented on the United Nations website contain one of the four compass directions (North, South, East, or West). For one point each, name two of them.

The answers


How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!

Monday 13 April 2015

Only Connect Post Mortem: Question of the Series

Throughout the latest series of Only Connect I conducted weekly polls to see which questions were readers' favourites, and now it's time to look over the results to see what (if any) patterns emerge. Are sequences preferred over connections? How do viewers take to the dreaded music rounds? And what was Question of the Series? (If you only care about that last one, then skip to the end!)

Before we get going there's some statistical housekeeping to do. I gathered votes for the 27 regular-season episodes (not counting celebrity specials), but as I didn't have the poll idea until episode 3 the first two weeks received very few responses and so are excluded from everything that follows. In addition, all polls were on a per-episode basis, so keep this in mind when interpreting the results: a question that received a lot of votes may have done so because it was very good, or because it was the best of a bad bunch. If I run these polls next season there will definitely be a 'none of the above' option! Finally, all data correct at time of writing, but the polls are still running for anyone lagging behind.

My first point of interest was connections versus sequences. I usually prefer the latter, but what about you lot? There are a few ways to look at this, but the simplest is the total votes received by sequence and connection questions across the entire series. On this front sequences do indeed triumph, picking up 1,246 votes to 1,107 for connections for a 53%-47% 'victory'. On an episode-by-episode basis, meanwhile, the sequence round questions scored more votes than the connections 16 times out of 25 (remember we've excluded the first two episodes), while a sequence question was twice as likely to be voted Question of the Week. This doesn't represent an overwhelming preference, however, with formal statistical tests being disinclined to identify any real preference for sequences over connections.

There's also a potential source of bias working against the connections round: music. Every episode features a music connection question, while (by my count, at least) there were only six of the new-fangled music sequences. If viewers dislike the music rounds as much as the contestants seem to (read more on that here), this could be why connections seem to suffer slightly overall in popularity. The plot on the right summarizes the vote share by question type (if you're unfamiliar with boxplots, these give a rough idea of the spread of votes, with the thick black lines giving the average share of the votes a question received, and a taller box indicating a bigger range of votes). The evidence is pretty damning for the music connections, which averaged just 3% of votes per episode while music sequences, perhaps benefiting from the novelty factor, were the single most popular question type. I should be a good statistician though and acknolwedge the relatively small sample size: we can't say with any particular confidence that music sequences were significantly better than the rest, but we can say that music connections are not a hit with viewers at home (or at least the viewers at home who can be bothered to vote on my blog!). Oh, and in case you were wondering about picture qeustions, they weren't significantly different from 'normal' ones, so I haven't bothered to separate them out in this plot.

Another important aspect to these data is that looking at average vote share isn't necessarily what we're interested in; after all, the average question will necessarily receive one-twelfth of the vote (which is why in the previous plot the connections and sequences are centred around the 8% mark). What's potentially more informative is how the best questions in each episode are distributed. Allowing tied questions to share the honours (it doesn't make much difference), there were 30 'questions of the week' across the series. If there were no substantial differences between music, picture and regular questions we'd expect to see 1 in 6 of these be pictures, about 1 in 10 be music (including music sequences) and the rest be regular style questions for a 5-3-22 split. In fact, just 2 picture questions earned the accolade, while 3 music questions and 25 'others' round out the set. This doesn't seem to represent a 'real' difference between the question types however (at least from a statistical perspective), which is unsurprising given the relatively small sample size.

It's time to round things off with the Halls of Fame and 'Shame' - those questions that received the largest (and smallest) shares of the vote. I should stress that the term 'shame' here is used with tongue firmly in cheek - Only Connect is a fantastic show and it's both a matter of human taste and mathematical inevitability that some questions will pick up the wooden spoon. What's more, I know that if I only mentioned the 'winners' at least some people would want to hear about the 'not-quite-so-winners' as well.

Let's get the Hall of 'Shame' out of the way. Just four questions had picked up no votes at time of writing. Presented along with the total votes on their respective polls, they are:

Episode 9, Question 2: A music connection where song titles contained types of weather ending in 'y' (Rainy Night in Georgia, etc.). (Total votes: 113)
Episode 14, Question 8: A picture sequence of the four most common dog breeds in the UK. (Total votes: 84)
Episode 23, Question 6: Allegedy Only Connect's 'most expensive question' saw both teams stumped by Robert Doisneau's photographs. (Total votes: 83)
Episode 24, Question 8: A 'straight up' sequence testing your knowledge of Afghanistan provinces. (Total votes: 66)

Not too much to say there, so let's get straight onto the highlights. The top three questions of the series are those that received the highest shares of their respective polls. Obviously this could just mean they were lacking competition, but it's good enough for me. Here, then, are the Questions of the Series:

3rd place (24.8%): Web country codes and their elements (Episode 13)

Clues of Australian gold, Antiguan and Barbudan silver, Portugese platinum and Cuban copper were a lovely construction, rewarding patience or a very brave early buzz. There's lots to like here, but what's really remarkable is that this made the top three despite not even being that episode's question of the week. (Spoilers!)

2nd place (27.7%): Letters in the element name (Episode 23)

Another chemical element question makes the top three, as O6, B5 and Fe4 had the hallmarks of luring you into an early buzz if you thought it was atomic number (it isn't, although C6 as an opening clue would have been evil). What's more, while realizing 'tin' was the natural end to the sequence, Sn3 isn't the easiest symbol to remember for the answer. Simultaneously tough and a real 'kick yourself' classic.

1st place (29.9%): First four answers in this programme (Episode 13)

"Forget question of the week, this felt like question of the series." - this was my first reaction when the sequence 'Broken hearts, Sibling feuds, £2 coins' had us all struggling to remember something we'd seem mere minutes previously ('Bens', in case you're wondering). I stand by that opinion now, and while I'm sure there will be claims of a ballot biased by my words at the time, I'm nevertheless delighted to see this reflected in the data. My understanding is this idea had been in the pipeline for years, but logistics had prevented its use until now - and it's perhaps just as well this was saved for BBC Two's much larger audience.

So that's your lot - not the most scientifically rigorous process but it would nevertheless be hard to begrudge any of those top three. A cracking series with many more fantastic questions than I have time to list here. Here's to the next one!

Sunday 12 April 2015

Only Connect Post Mortem: Is the music question really that bad?

A common sight (and sound) on Only Connect is a team's anguish as they pick the dreaded music question. Heads drop, faces grimace, and Victoria (sometimes) apologizes - but do the numbers back up these reactions? I took a (very) quick look.


The plot below summarizes the points scored by teams on every connection question in Series 10 of the show. (I've ignored sequences as they offer higher points scoring potential, and have far fewer music questions.) There does appear to be some difference, with it seeming very slightly harder to score big on the music questions than non-music, but this is somewhat balanced by a relatively high proportion of one-pointers. Moreover, if we turn to some formal statistical tests there's no real evidence of a true underlying difference between the two types of question. In short: do not fear the music question bong.

Thursday 9 April 2015

Star Trek features a game called Strategema

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 9: Well done, you beat us!
4+ out of 9: We'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The left-fielder

The ones that got away
1) What type of acid is found in car batteries?
2) What was the name of the first production commercial jetliner, which took paying passengers for the first time in 1952?
3) What two-word term was coined by the critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 to describe the technique popularized by Jackson Pollock and others?
4) 2 point question: What is each player's objective in the board game Stratego?
5) 2 point question: In Risk, which continent is the easiest to defend, having the fewest connections to any other continents?
6) Who was the president of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954?
7) What type of creature is a dugite?

The answers


Our excuses


How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Would you have helped us win (4 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions 
Question 4
1) The coulomb, the unit of electric charge, can be defined as the function of which two SI base units? (You need both for the point.)
2) Boeing commercial airliners follow the familiar naming convention of the form 7X7, where X is replaced by a number (so e.g. X = 4 gives us the Boeing 747). Which is the only single-digit number X which gives rise to a 7X7 model name that has not yet been assigned to an airliner?
3) What nickname for Pollock can be obtained by adding a single letter to that of a famous Victorian serial killer?
4) For one point each, name the movies in which each of these fictional board games appear.
5) In a standard Risk set, the continent of Africa is divided into six territories. Four of these are North Africa, South Africa, East Africa and Congo (or Central Africa). For one point each, name the other two, both of which are also real-world countries. (So no, West Africa is not one of them.)
6) Lê Đức Thọ is one of two people to voluntarily refuse a Nobel Prize, refusing the 1973 Peace Prize claiming there was no actual peace in Vietnam. Which French novelist is the other, declining the 1964 Literature Prize saying "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution"?
7) In which Disney animated film would you find a royal aide called 'Sir Hiss'?

The answers


How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!

Monday 6 April 2015

Only Connect Post Mortem: Series 10 Grand Final
Orienteers vs. Chessmen

Guess who forgot to do a question of the week poll in all the excitement of the grand final! Difficult to choose a favourite this week, but our final question of the week goes to CamelCase, seeing off the series with another deviously simple one. For the final time though, please select your favourite - I'll be running some exciting stats on all of the polls from this series in due coruse!

Thursday 2 April 2015

The file format GIF is pronounced with a soft 'G'

Your targets this week:

We won this week, but could you have done even better?

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The rich person otherkin
4) The DJ-man
5) The mystery woman

The ones that got away
1) The first official Presidential Car was a 1909 White Steamer. Which President?
2) 2 point question: According to maritime law, there are four kinds of shipwreck. Two are 'lagan' and 'derelict, for one point each what are the other two?
3) Which of these is not a real member of the Batman baddies 'Club of Villains'? Charlie Caligula, Doctor Murder, El Sombrero, King Kraken, or Swagman?
4) 2 point question: In a Cricket World Cup quarter-final last month, Martin Guptill set a the record for highest individual score in a World Cup match with 237 runs. For one point each, what country does he play for, and what country were his opponents in that game?
5) What do the letters GIF stand for in the name of a computer file format?
6) The French 75 cocktail consists of Champagne and what other drink?

The answers


Our excuses


How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more points)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions
Question 4
1) Taft is one of only two US Presidents whose surname begins and ends with the same letter - who's the other?
2) The Shipping Forecast is broadcast each day at 0520, 1201, 1754, and what other time? You get 2 points if you're spot on, and 1 point if you're within 10 minutes.
3) What appropriate name was given to another gang of Detective Comics villains whose members' codenames were King, Queen, Jack, Ten and Ace?
4) For one point each, what do these two cricket umpire signals indicate?
5) All doubt about the definitive pronunciation of what operating system was removed by an audio recording by creator Linus Torvalds?
6) According to the International Bartenders Association, a French 75 consists of 1.5 centilitres of lemon juice, 3 centilitres of gin, 6 centilitres of Champagane, and 2 dashes of simple syrup. If our gin is 40% alcohol by volume, our Champagne is 10% alcohol by volume, our lemon juice is 0% alcohol by volume, and we ignore the simple syrup - what strength is our resulting French 75? (You can have 2% either way.)

The answers


How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!