Comments on: Some NameDropper stats

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:33:11 +0000

I was curious about the learning curve idea, too; I found that I was getting a bit father in successive rounds based on what I’d learned from previous failures, essentially building up a small stable of new-to-me artist names that I could rule out on replay.

But that seems like it wouldn’t scale well — just how many novel artist names can I keep in my head over the short (let alone long) term without any kind of point of reference like actually hearing their music and identifying it with the name? So I’m not surprised you didn’t seem much effect when you took a look. I do wonder if there’d be a measurable initial-onset effect for any players first few games, though, as they manage to grab a few new artist names as hedges from round to round.

Also, I’d like to note that I was actually sad to find out that The Disco Suffering wasn’t a real band, because that’s practically a sale right there, sight unseen. (Sound unheard?)

By: BethaJ

BethaJ — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:25:36 +0000

Porcupine Tree?! I’m going to have to look that one up…
When I first started reading the description of this game I thought it would be a “Name That Tune” type game. But I like it a lot.

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:47:52 +0000

I agree that your crowd is just biased to non-classical music. I can readily identify the classical composers in the list above, and Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, and Ravel are hardly obscure (and Grieg and Satie aren’t so strange either).

Dinah Washington does suggest you’re skewing young. Heck, I’ve heard *of* her but can’t swear to have *heard* her.

By: Los

Los — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:27:35 +0000

Hey. I like this game a lot. However, maybe the time limit could be a little shorter, because I was able to look up the artists on the net. Thanks for the machines!

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:24:45 +0000

Thanks Weasel – glad you posted, was wondering who was chewing up the leaderboard. Agree that the game may have a bias toward the Internet crowd, but a familiarity function targeted at that crowd may not be such a bad thing considering that these are the same folks that are using online music engines. Hard to say for sure.

By: Weasel

Weasel — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:46:08 +0000

Firstly, great game! Thanks for providing some spare-time entertainment. I’m much more geeky about music than statistics, but I strongly suspect that the prevalence of classical composers not recognised is not so much to do with algorithm bias, and more to do with the particular music knowledge of the people playing the game. Could it be that most people who read blogs/play online games are young-ish people (who are usually more familiar with popular music than classical)? Grieg, Satie, Ravel, Mendelssohn – these are not obscure composers (if you’re into classical music). Anyway, great stuff!