huoyangao's blog

A reverse auction website, a reverse eBay?

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:22:48 -0500

I would like to see a reverse auction website, a reverse eBay, if you will. Let’s say, if you want a copy of used book “Chemistry explained”, you just start a reverse auction of it, people with the book may compete to sell you the book. Maybe.

It all started when I have finished a child education eBook
Mind Games for the Math-Challenged. I want to have a native English speaker to proofread it and as
I was able to auction it off at eBay, It occurred naturally to me that I would like to find the service at eBay. However, as the bid always go up at eBay, it does not looks like that is what I really wanted. After some thought, I come up with a what I thought to be a smart hack to get it auctioned on eBay. I included the eBay list below. I had more than 500

Mind Games for the Math-challenged (or not)

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:29:48 -0500

Free eBook. download at

http://huoyangao.com/ttt/MindGames.pdf

I will respond to comments about the eBook at this blog.

TTT democracy 101 education game

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:42:01 -0600

This is a game that I developed for a small group of people. The group considers "bills" on national, local and/or family level issues that are interesting to the group. For every bill the group will elect a member as a "representative", presumably to represent group on the particular issue at some larger assembly or congress at some future date.

The game plays like this: Everybody takes turn to act as a sponsor to introduce a bill to be considered by the group. Each player will decide his/her position on the bill (or more precisely whether he/she will vote for or against the bill at the future congress if he/she get elected) without knowing other players' positions. Each player will also give vote to one group member as the representative. One cannot vote for oneself and the bill sponsor. Players will vote without knowing each other's positions or votes on the particular bill but with full knowledge of all previous positions and votes of everybody. The group member got the majority votes will serve as the representative. If need be, dice can be used to break a tie.

Obviously, the member you voted for may or may not take position on the bill the way you wanted. The group representative (which maybe the one you voted for, and maybe not) may not take the position the way you wanted. What's more, the elected representative may not take the position the majority of the group member would wanted though he got a majority of votes. Sad? maybe, at least sometimes. Realistic? you bet. After the voting, a debate will follow so players know each other's reason for or against the bill. And optionally the bill can be amended in various ways and reconsidered by the group.

more detail at:
http://turing-test-two.com/ttt/democracy101.html

Turing Test Two (or Turing Test for Human vs Human)

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:36:43 -0600

...
In Turing Test Two, two players A and B are again being questioned by a human interrogator C. Before A gave out his answer (labeled as aa) to a question, he would also be required to guess how the other player B will answer the same question and this guess is labeled as ab. Similarly B will give her answer (labeled as bb) and her guess of A's answer, ba. The answers aa and ba will be grouped together as group a and similarly bb and ab will be grouped together as group b. The interrogator will be given first the answers as two separate groups and with only the group label (a and b) and without the individual labels (aa, ab, ba and bb). If C cannot tell correctly which of the aa and ba is from player A and which is from player B, B will get a score of one. If C cannot tell which of the bb and ab is from player B and which is from player A, A will get a score of one. All answers (with the individual labels) are then made available to all parties (A, B and C) and then the game continues. At the end of the game, the player who scored more is considered had won the game and is more "intelligent".