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Comment by coriny | Hacker News Reader

OK, I failed this test before I even got to it. Apparently you are only allowed to put one country in the "Where did you grow up in?" question. I don't know why they aren't interested in the verbal abilities of the large number of people whose parents weren't sedentary - e.g. military, mining industry, diplomats, aid, disaster, mega-construction etc etc.

/whine over.

EDIT: Also, no way to communicate this flaw to them (I'm not on Twitter).

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Well, there is a way to communicate this flaw to them. You've just chosen not to participate in that medium.

True. I could also walk over to the place and tell them in person (after a flight and a drive etc). My thoughts are that if you are asking people to volunteer to contribute, expecting people to sign up to a third party in order to communicate is not "frictionless". After all, there is thing called email that's been around for a while and is used by, pretty much, everyone. Also post forms. The main reason for using Twitter (my belief) is to get your users to promote you for free.

Oops, you closed the whine tag too early!

I know! That's annoying me as well! ;)

Because having a multi-select plays havoc with stats.

Indeed, reality has a nasty habit of confounding our models.

Which is a terrible excuse for putting a fundamental flaw into the analysis. It's building a big assumption into the model that's known not to hold true in reality. Especially as the mis-represented cohort will, linguistically, be one of the most interesting - likely above average intelligence and a very different exposure to language. I suspect personally it's an oversight.

EDIT: Or, as is dawning on me, I might have missed a bit of sarcasm?

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