Multiple choice moons

A couple of newspaper websites have recently published quizzes based on How Many Moons does the Earth Have.

The first was the Mail Online, which used a rather manual approach of a list of possible answers for each question, then the answers further down the page. I wasn't overwhelmed by this version, which you can see here, in part because they didn't have any useful link to the book. Newspapers tend not to pay for these kinds of extract, but this is on the basis that they make it easy to buy the book.

Perhaps most entertaining here is the collection of almost uniformly negative comments, often complaining that the questions were 'general knowledge, not science.' I simply don't understand this moan: science often is general knowledge, and all the questions were science/tech based.

The second version appeared on the website of the now internet-only Independent (although you can still get the excellent i newspaper in paper form), and I much preferred it. As you can see, they took a much more visual approach and gave multiple choice 'click to answer' questions that took advantage of the format.

What both miss is what is, to me, the most important feature of the book - that it doesn't just give answers, but spends a page expanding on them. So, for instance, my answer about how much salt in the sea was denounced as a trick question on the Mail website - but if you follow through the page in the book, my answer is a perfectly logical one.

Whether or not these online quizzes generate any interest in the book, it's still an interesting experience.

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

Search This Blog