"There are two well-known attempts to build miniature cities for children: Mini-Munich and KidZania.
Both have streets, storefronts, jobs, and a local currency. But they are built on opposing assumptions about what children are capable of. One treats children as consumers of scripted activities; the other lets them participate in a city whose parts depend on one another and is malleable to their actions."
Children behind bank counters, in city councils, as mayors, as newspaper and television editors, as employees in registration offices, as workers in a furniture workshop, in a stonemason’s workshop – naturally, none of that is possible. They lack all the prerequisites, we think. Not just in ability, but also in seriousness, in accountability, in responsibility. And besides, child labor is forbidden, in the interest of children, as we like to say. And so we let them grow up in the children’s ghetto, let them dream of what will happen “when I grow up someday.” They remain, as if it were only natural, locked out of the serious realities of life – immature, in need of supervision, not to be taken seriously.
I greatly appreciate your suggestions, munch. I really like it, but I worry that the game loses some of its mainstream appeal through that. I don't know, I have to look into this in more detail.
However, I did find a solution to bring the focus a bit away from the binary search/bisection.
Namely, the game now shows a hint after the second incorrect guess. For example the hint "The US covers 1.87% of the Earth's surface." is displayed for the question about what percentage of the Earth's surface is land.
This of course lets you, just as you wanted, rethink the original question once more now in light of new information.
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I think I found a solution to bring the focus a bit away from the binary search and would greatly appreciate feedback from you.
The game now shows a hint after the second incorrect guess. For example the hint "The US covers 1.87% of the Earth's surface." is displayed for the question about what percentage of the Earth's surface is land.
How does the new information received through the hint impact your guess and assumptions?
help
I think I found a solution to bring the focus a bit away from the binary search and would greatly appreciate feedback from you.
The game now shows a hint after the second incorrect guess. For example the hint "The US covers 1.87% of the Earth's surface." is displayed for the question about what percentage of the Earth's surface is land.
How does the new information received through the hint impact your guess and assumptions?
One of the main downsides of the game so far was the focus on doing somewhat trivial binary search if one did not succeed in getting within ±20% of the correct answer with the first guess.
I think I did find a solution to bring the focus a bit away from the binary search and would greatly appreciate feedback from all of you.
The game now shows a hint after the second incorrect guess. For example the hint "The US covers 1.87% of the Earth's surface." is displayed for the question about what percentage of the Earth's surface is land.
I hope that this brings into the game a whole new dimension where you have a second moment after the initial Fermi estimation to really think through your guess and the assumptions you have made. How does the new information received through the hint impact your model?
I think those things put together now make the game a very compelling training ground for getting better at Fermi estimation and updating your beliefs in light of new information without over or under-reacting.
Hi Andrew, great seeing you here. I'd love to chat with you because I also plan to create some more games around Fermi estimation in the future. I would, if you don't mind, send you an email to the address you've listed in your profile.
Initially the win criteria was within ±10% of the correct answer, but 15 minutes ago I changed it to ±20%. My rationale here is that the goal of the game is to get within the ballpark of the correct answer. And a guess of 80 billion when the correct answer is 100 billion seems quite good and indeed should probably win the game.
The UX change you propose would be quite an improvement and it is unfortunate that I haven't considered that myself. I'll implement that in the next few days.
I'll definitely support scientific notations going forward. But it might take one or two days before I have that implemented.
The orange means your answer is within 50% of the absolute value. I might change it at some point away from a linear scale to a logarithmic scale, but I'm not quite sure yet.
No, you didn't miss it. I will implement that either today or tomorrow. If you don't mind to answer: do you have any other feedback? Is the win criteria of ±10% good? Or should it be loosened up to ±25%?
It's quite extraordinary that so many people have come before us, and it gets quite sad when one understands that half of those died before they turned 15 years old. The human graveyard is full of children, and we shall never forget where we came from and how much progress we have since made.
Both have streets, storefronts, jobs, and a local currency. But they are built on opposing assumptions about what children are capable of. One treats children as consumers of scripted activities; the other lets them participate in a city whose parts depend on one another and is malleable to their actions."