So far my public count is you, me, the scallop guy, and Gwern gave up. Low enough competition that more people should try making an entry with 20 hours of work.
Maybe 30 hours? I do have a long way to go, so it’s probably unrealistic to expect some Less Wrongers to actually be comfortable submitting something based on 20 hours.
The number of people we know will enter is low, although the number that do enter could turn out to be high. However, if you’re looking for an income source then convincing us to hire you by entering the contest is an excellent idea.
Downvote the original away! My perfectionism and desire to avoid looking silly in front of smart people overrode my desire to jump at (perceived) low-hanging fruit with a short entry.
On a related note, I predict with 80% probability that there will be greater than five and fewer than ten entries. If there are fewer than five, I’m going to look awfully silly having not submitted anything.
I wonder if the general thing that kept Less Wrongers away here is not just perfectionism but perfectionism mixed with Bayesianism and unwillingness to try frequentism when forced to by frequentist studies. There’s no way to do nutrition with a Bayesian approach unless you have a lot of funding and a willingness to expose large groups of people to harmful controls or nutrient deficiency or overdose studies. There is probably a fair amount of low hanging fruit in large cohort groups for those willing to try new things with the data.
My paper was basically a thesis length frequentist failure to reject the null hypothesis that answered a question slightly different from the one being asked and might have accidentally proved that Nature is fundamental via what I call the nutrient ratio combinatorial explosion hypothesis.
(though you might be able to play around with some interesting results with enough funding to have people submit to regular blood and urine testing for between a week and two months… I think I could probably prove that some vitamins and some minerals are absorbed differently sublingually versus orally).
I surprised myself by managing to submit an entry to the contest an hour or two before deadline.
I don’t want to say it wasn’t very good, but...well, I could either discuss all the minerals, discuss a mineral or two in suitable depth, or vastly exceed the recommended word count and the amount of time I could reasonably devote to this project. I won’t say what I chose, since that might bias peer review, but looking at the peer reviews, it looks like many of the entries had very different interpretations on where to go with the question and a lot of it is going to be who was lucky enough to interpret it in the same way the judges do.
The ID numbers of the entries I was told to peer review are kind of obtuse. I guess I won’t speculate on what they might mean about the number of entries publicly, lest giving secret peer-review information be against the rules or something. But I am very curious how many people entered. I told a friend to enter the contest with a single-sentence entry saying just “Minerals are good for you and you should eat more of them”; just in case the contest had fewer than five entries it would be the easiest $500 she ever earned. She quite properly refused.
Also, looking over my desktop today I realized there’s like a 25% chance I accidentally turned in a super-rough-draft with a similar name to my final copy. So, um, if anyone got a paper for peer review where the references are things like [small-calcium-study] or [that-one-experiment-with-the-potassium] and there’s no abstract or recommendations, let me know now so I can disqualify myself and avoid further humiliation.
None of my three peer-reviewed ones are like that.
I don’t think any of my three ones to peer review are Kevin’s, because we discussed what we were doing. So there’s at least five entries, so your friend wouldn’t have made the $500 anyway.
told a friend to enter the contest with an single-sentence entry saying just “Minerals are good for you and you should eat more of them”; just in case the contest had fewer than five entries it would be the easiest $500 she ever earned. She quite properly refused.
Agh. I totally would have done that. Too bad I didn’t think of it.
You seem to know more about the minerals off the top of your head than I do in total, and I submitted an entry. You totally should have submitted one, even with just an hour’s work, for that purpose.
I am working on my entry to this competition right now. I am having great fun.
How many other people are working on entries?
What happens if, for example, me and three other people submit entries, but mine is mediocre? Do I still get a prize?
We will award all five prizes as long as we have five entries. Period.
Sure.
I pretty much finished my entry just five minutes ago. I’ve had lots of fun doing this. I look forward to seeing what you think of it.
So far my public count is you, me, the scallop guy, and Gwern gave up. Low enough competition that more people should try making an entry with 20 hours of work.
How much work have you put into yours so far?
Maybe 30 hours? I do have a long way to go, so it’s probably unrealistic to expect some Less Wrongers to actually be comfortable submitting something based on 20 hours.
I would guess that I’ve put about the same amount of time into it. I have a ways to go, too.
I aborted mine too. :)
Why?
Perceived unreliability as an income source.
Do you feel like donating any notes or research to me (and anyone else who wants it, out of fairness)?
I’m sure this would help my efforts, as well as those of anyone else who wanted a copy.
If you send me anything, I’m happy to distribute it to anyone else who asks for it from me, so it won’t inconvenience you.
The number of people we know will enter is low, although the number that do enter could turn out to be high. However, if you’re looking for an income source then convincing us to hire you by entering the contest is an excellent idea.
I publicly declare my intent to enter. Downvote this post if I don’t (I’ll update at the deadline).
Downvote the original away! My perfectionism and desire to avoid looking silly in front of smart people overrode my desire to jump at (perceived) low-hanging fruit with a short entry.
On a related note, I predict with 80% probability that there will be greater than five and fewer than ten entries. If there are fewer than five, I’m going to look awfully silly having not submitted anything.
Here’s to future contests! :)
I wonder if the general thing that kept Less Wrongers away here is not just perfectionism but perfectionism mixed with Bayesianism and unwillingness to try frequentism when forced to by frequentist studies. There’s no way to do nutrition with a Bayesian approach unless you have a lot of funding and a willingness to expose large groups of people to harmful controls or nutrient deficiency or overdose studies. There is probably a fair amount of low hanging fruit in large cohort groups for those willing to try new things with the data.
My paper was basically a thesis length frequentist failure to reject the null hypothesis that answered a question slightly different from the one being asked and might have accidentally proved that Nature is fundamental via what I call the nutrient ratio combinatorial explosion hypothesis.
(though you might be able to play around with some interesting results with enough funding to have people submit to regular blood and urine testing for between a week and two months… I think I could probably prove that some vitamins and some minerals are absorbed differently sublingually versus orally).
Yeah, my paper was essentially going the same way before I bailed out.
I surprised myself by managing to submit an entry to the contest an hour or two before deadline.
I don’t want to say it wasn’t very good, but...well, I could either discuss all the minerals, discuss a mineral or two in suitable depth, or vastly exceed the recommended word count and the amount of time I could reasonably devote to this project. I won’t say what I chose, since that might bias peer review, but looking at the peer reviews, it looks like many of the entries had very different interpretations on where to go with the question and a lot of it is going to be who was lucky enough to interpret it in the same way the judges do.
The ID numbers of the entries I was told to peer review are kind of obtuse. I guess I won’t speculate on what they might mean about the number of entries publicly, lest giving secret peer-review information be against the rules or something. But I am very curious how many people entered. I told a friend to enter the contest with a single-sentence entry saying just “Minerals are good for you and you should eat more of them”; just in case the contest had fewer than five entries it would be the easiest $500 she ever earned. She quite properly refused.
Also, looking over my desktop today I realized there’s like a 25% chance I accidentally turned in a super-rough-draft with a similar name to my final copy. So, um, if anyone got a paper for peer review where the references are things like [small-calcium-study] or [that-one-experiment-with-the-potassium] and there’s no abstract or recommendations, let me know now so I can disqualify myself and avoid further humiliation.
None of my three peer-reviewed ones are like that.
I don’t think any of my three ones to peer review are Kevin’s, because we discussed what we were doing. So there’s at least five entries, so your friend wouldn’t have made the $500 anyway.
Agh. I totally would have done that. Too bad I didn’t think of it.
You seem to know more about the minerals off the top of your head than I do in total, and I submitted an entry. You totally should have submitted one, even with just an hour’s work, for that purpose.