It's like 20Q on crack ... can you stump it?

[steamteck]

It's like 20Q on crack ... can you stump it?
For reason I'm not sure of, it's called 'The Akinator'. You think up a character (real or fictional), it asks you questions to try to deduce who your character is. And from what I can tell, it's very, very good ...

http://us.akinator.com/#

[Previsionary]

There's already a thread on this on the second page of Gen discussions, and I also made mention of this on the FRP blog back in May... of 2009.

[docdelorean88]

 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...he guessed minute man... wow...

[Mr. Hamrick]

I stumped it three times. 

Funny thing is that one time he got the female wrestler that I was thinking of's former tag team partner.  The tag team partner is less known than she is.

[bengal]

It got Wildcat, but Captain Carrot and Rubber Duck stumped it.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I've stumped it a few time, kept it going for a while other times.  Where it has the most problems with is characters with recent developments, where the answers to the questions have either recently changed, or many people are not aware of some parts of the character.  For example, it expected me to say Tim Drake was not an adult, while he is now portrayed as one.  It also had some trouble with Richard Rahl from the sword of truth series, because my answer that he was probably part of an ancient kingdom has only been recently revealed in the Law of Nines, which SoT fans are apparently not that well aware of.  (Especially the ones more familiar with the TV series)

I'm wondering if this was factored in.  Can it adapt to evolving answers to its questions.  There also needs to be a way to trim off irrelavant questions such as "are you watching this character right now?'

[lugaru]

Holy crap he guessed El Santo (Mexican Wrestler and movie star)

[JeyNyce]

I changed my person half way (From Obama to Chelse Clinton) and it still guess it right.  Awesome!

[Podmark]

That's pretty cool. I tried three well known characters just to test it and it got them all though it had some trouble with my last one. Going to try something more obscure next.

[Mr. Hamrick]

Obscure stuff is rather easy to stump it with.  I tried it with a popular morning show personality here in Atlanta (and the show is syndicated) and stumped it.  Also stumped it with a few other minor celebrities.  It seems to function on a database combined with the probability of a person being thought of.  You can add people to the database if you stump it.  And it will tell you how many times that person has been thought up.

[steamteck]

To me what's interesting is not so much if you can stump it but the questions it asks shouldn't lead it to the correct conclusion.

[Mr. Hamrick]

To me what's interesting is not so much if you can stump it but the questions it asks shouldn't lead it to the correct conclusion.

which is why I suspect it uses a combination of a database and probability of names being chosen from that database.

Ex: I went to pick a pro-wrestler who is on the independent circuit on two different occasions.  On both occasions, at some point, the same wrong choice was picked.  (On one instance the choice was the wrong gender!) This tells me that the wrong guess was in the database and had been chosen a certain number of times over the person who I was choosing.

On another instance, the questions asked could pertain to a few different actresses or actors.  However, it seemed to go with the most popular choice out of a narrowed list of names based on the questions.

It's like using a filtered search for a name.