Ok, provocative thread title ;). Also possibly “Please let me experiment on you”…
The actual situation:
I may have mentioned at some point that right now I’m enrolled as a student in IT, and this year I have a research project to complete. The particular project I’m involved in concerns explanation systems in AI, and there’s an emphasis on making sure that the way explanations are generated actually matches the way people themselves generate and expect explanations.
I have a couple of short example situations here Explanation test.pdf - Google Drive (I hope that link works). It would be very helpful to me if I could get a medium cross-section of people to tell me what they think the best answers to the four questions/two situations are (there are no right or wrongs - it’s what would satisfy **you **as an explanation of the situation). Then I would know, in designing my real experiment, whether particular hypotheses are true or at least likely to lead to interesting results.
Thanks in advance for helping me out! It would also help if anyone who answers the questions adds in their rough age range and whether you consider yourself very techy/geeky, not very, or somewhere in between.
I’ll come back later and explain what the hypotheses under consideration were
1.a. Bob is tall and personable.
1.b. Ed does not interview well. His clothes are dissheveled, his hair is unkempt, he talks about himself all the time.
2.a. Ritzy location, renter does not like to garden.
2.b. Unit is poorly maintained.
1a. ACME needed somebody who knows PCP. Bob was the only applicant who knows that.
1b. ACME does not need somebody who knows Ruby.
2a. It was the only location on Carlton. Or did not want a location on Fitzroy.
2b. It has three bedrooms. That seems strange but it’s the only characteristic that separated the rented properties from the unrented ones. If somebody gave me this explanation, I would ask for an explanation why an extra bedroom was not a desired feature.
I’m 57 and I do not consider myself to be tech savvy.
1a. Bob had experience in the most relevant/needed languages. Java and PHP were more weighted than CSS and Ruby.
1b. Ed didn’t have experience in the most relevant languages. Java and PHO were more weighted than CSS and Ruby.
2a. Carlton is a highly desirable location for under 400.
2b. Renters on Fitzroy prefer houses
1a: ACME evaluated candidates based only on programming language knowledge. It gave the most weight to JavaScript, and some weight to SQL. Bob met both criteria.
1b: ACME evaluated candidates based only on programming language knowledge. It gave the most weight to JavaScript, and some weight to SQL. Ed didn’t know JavaScript.
2a: The given criteria are insufficient to explain number 2’s successful rental. There were probably other factors involved.
2b: The given criteria are insufficient to explain why number 5 was not rented. There were probably other factors involved.
Age 51, computer programmer with some peripheral / second-hand knowledge of modern AI.
I didn’t read anyone else’s replies. I’m also…apparently…wordy.
1a. Aya and Bob together cover all the requirements needed for a dynamic website. Bob specifically for the PHP and Aya specifically for the Java and CSS. She’s the frontend developer and he’s the backend developer. Perfect team.
1b. That Ed knows Ruby isn’t needed for websites, and his knowledge of SQL and CSS individually aren’t very useful for website development as the two skillsets don’t intermingle for a front end or a back end developer. It makes him only half-as-good in both areas. He’s not a good fit.
2a. Carlton must be a nice area for young professionals without children. This lines up with not caring about a garden, being able to afford the higher rent, not needing the extra bedroom, and the importance of train access.
2b. Something must be wrong with this place, because otherwise on paper it has all the amenities people could want. Since it and the house are both in Fitzroy, but someone rented the house even though it’s more expensive for less bedrooms, I can only assume #5 is a shithole of a place.
I’m in the 25-35 range, with web dev knowledge and general computer troubleshooting ability. So, compared to the average person who can’t make their own website, very techy I suppose.
1a and 1b need to be answered together. Bob and Ed have as many languages; each of them knows one language that Aya (the person with most languages) does not. So why Bob over Ed? Assuming that the response is in the data we’ve been given (;)), then it’s because the non-Aya language that Bob has and Ed doesn’t (PHP) is considered to be more necessary to the company than the one Ed does and Bob doesn’t (Ruby).
2a. Location, it’s the only one in Carlton.
3b. It appears to be comparable to 4 and 6, neither of which were rented either. The main difference between all three and the place in their location which did get rented is that the rented place is a house with 2 bedrooms, whereas the unrented units are apartments with 3 bedrooms: so, whomever rented 1 preferred a house and did not need 3 bedrooms.
I’m 51; degree in ChemE, have won impromptu “who’s the nerdiest person in the team” competitions at work (my MSc in Quantum Chemistry beats up STEM degrees below PhD), work in Business IT. Parts of my job involve: figuring out how the process really works (which is often not how the people doing it think it works), how it should work with the new program we’re installing, explaining this to the users, and explaining “this thing the users need to have and we need you to program” to our programmers. To non-techies I’m a techie, to programmers I’m definitely not.
I’m also from Spain, which may seem like a silly data point but there are a lot of things we explain differently, from how we give directions (the fact that Google Maps insists in giving “compass-based directions” is actually considered a minus) to how we write cooking recipes.
Using my insider knowledge again, Melbourne renters (to the best of my knowledge) don’t ever think “gee I’d hate having that extra bedroom, so no I won’t take it”. Although the data fits that theory, I couldn’t, in good conscience, suggest it.
Hi, my name around here is Nava and I do avoid renting 3Bs and 4Bs if a 2B is available and within my price range (other amenities also to be considered and very often not listed in For Rent ads; for example I prefer electric hobs to gas). My own home has 2Bs; the 3B units in the same building have the same total area and those 3 “bedrooms” give me claustrophobia. The two smaller ones wouldn’t be legal bedrooms under current building codes. Note that I didn’t say “the renters were not interested in 3B at all”, I started with “preferred houses”. If they had preferred houses but needed 3Bs, they would have had to shove their preference and take an apartment (there’s no 3B houses available).
1a & b. Although six languages are listed, the only languages that both hires have is JavaScript and SQL, so these must be the highest priority. Also the two candidates who were hired are the only ones who have both. This is why Bob was hired and Ed was not. And if they are hiring based solely on specific language competency they are making a mistake.
2a. Carlton must be an especially desirable location.
2b. #5 looks bigger than #1, although it’s a “unit” (whatever that is) instead of a house. The low rent suggests it must also be commensurately undesirable (poor condition or some other problem), but still not low enough to compensate so it goes unrented.
I am 62 and an exec at an IT contractor with a background as a software developer, so pretty tech savvy.
1, both questions: Might have to do with which languages the employer’s actually using, or actually using most often. Might have something to do with factors not explained in the question, of which there are many.
2a: most likely because it’s the only one on/in Carlton and the renter wanted to be there; although there’s not really enough information to be sure.
2b: 3 other places also weren’t rented. #6 has no item not also shared with at least one of the other 3. No way to tell whether the problem with #6 is something it had in common with #'s 3 through 5, or whether there was something wrong with the particular place. Maybe houses are desired more than apartments by at least one of the renters, and Carlton is desired more than Fitzroy by at least one additional one of the renters, and there were only two renters looking for places. Maybe there’s something specific wrong with #6; we’re not told anything about the condition of the places. Maybe the upstairs neighbor was practicing bass on high volume when the place was shown, and while #2 has a similar problem the noisemaker wasn’t there when the renter looked at the place. There really isn’t enough information at all.
