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arundelo comments on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey - Less Wrong
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I took the survey.
The political section is begging for a one line write in, seriously. Please consider adding on in addition to the pick one option poll. I'm not having warm fuzzies for any of the groups and had to bite my tongue and pick one I really really dislike, just because the alternatives are so much worse and one of the alternatives, while probably quite popular a choice, will be misinterpreted if I chose it.
From your perspective, that makes sense. From my perspective - I don't intend to ever look at this data. I'm going to import it into SPSS, have it crunch numbers for me, and come out with some result like "Less Wrong users are 65% libertarian" or like "Men are more likely to be socialist than women."
If you put "other" - and this applies to any of the questions, not just this one - you're pretty much wasting your vote unless someone else is going to sift through the data and be interested that this particular anonymous line of the spreadsheet believes in strong environmental protection but an otherwise free market.
Looking at the answers, I really shouldn't have allowed write-ins for any questions - I was kind of surprised how many people can't settle on a specific gender, even though the aim of the question was more to figure out how many men versus women are on here than to judge how people feel about society (I considered saying "sex" instead, but that has its own pitfalls and wouldn't have let me get the transgender info as easily. I'll do it that way next time.)
I was particularly harsh on the politics question because I know how strong the temptation is. I think next survey I'll give every question an "other" check box, but it will literally just be a check box and there will be no room to write anything in.
You could cut the gordian knot by borrowing Randall Munroe and Relsqui's solution for the xkcd color survey, which was to ask about chromosomal sex:
Technically, isn't it the number of X chromosomes that matters to colorblindness? It's just that people with Y chromosomes almost always have one X chromosome, and people without them almost always have two.
You're correct; we asked for Y chromosomes rather than X chromosomes because it's way easier to have an extra X and not know it than to have a Y and not know it. So if we ask about Y, we can rough-sort into "probably XY" and "probably XX" groups and then look at the statistics for chromosomal deviations within those groups.
... especially if they're responding to xkcd polls.
You have some reason to believe that Klinefelte's syndrome (XXY) is less common among xkcd readers than among the general population?
I thought I did. Now that I've followed your link, I realize that even if it were less common, it would probably only be marginally so, so I withdraw my comment above.
Most people don't actually know their karyotype, and are often surprised to learn that it's not always what you assume. You can't necessarily infer chromosomes from external appearance and self-identification reliably; you have to look at the actual chromosomes to be sure.
If I'm not mistaken, you don't need a DNA test for this. A cell sample under a strong microscope will show the barr bodies for XX (this won't distinguish XXY, but that's pretty rare).
Looking at the barr bodies is not a karyotype test. A test that can't detect whether or not someone is not XX/XY sufficient to actually tell you the information you need to know your chromosome type.
Yes, in terms of strict probability most people will be one of those. The test of the method is how well it handles edge cases (not at all); this is of considerably greater importance when you're talking about those edge cases.
Also, rereading that explanation, I'm annoyed at how I worded it. It's okay, but my trans*-inclusive vocabulary has improved since then and I could do better. Hell, just "if unsure, select 'yes' if you were born with a penis" would have been sufficient.
I'm not sure how any of these wordings of questions handle people with ambiguous genitalia.
Fair point. I'm not sure either; I think I'm relying on a given individual who is e.g. intersex either a) knowing that, and being able to make a better-educated guess about their chromosomes than any heuristic I offer, or b) not knowing that, which I'm willing to assume correlates well to having genitals that either do look like a penis or don't.