Name-letter Effect
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
If so, an interesting proof of concept might be to reconstruct a person's full birth name from a corpus of their writing.
I realize starting sentences with "my" or "maybe" would be much more expressive, but I irrationally refrain from it.
I should think joining 'phobia' to any Greek noun is acceptable though. Perhaps verbs too.
Probably better to stick to Greek prefixes though - there can't be many words you could choose that wouldn't have an already in use or at least more sensible sounding Greek alternative. 'Internet', perhaps.
I dislike "e" because it's hard to paint small. I also find J as a capital to be really awkward looking, but it's one of my initials.
Huh?
My disk encryption password is 1223334. Doesn't do you much good when you have to be sitting in front of my computer to use it.
Presumably you mean (that likelihood)^{-1}.
An associate (personal, professional, business, etc.) of yours knows your HN handle and has read your post, above.
At some point, that associate is with you when you are using your computer. You briefly leave your machine unattended and unlocked for whatever reason (e.g. restroom).
Your associate now may be able to compromise your security.
Extending the above scenario: what happens when the above post draws the attention of people who decide to become an associate of yours after the fact (aka "spearphishing")?
What’s really in a Name-Letter Effect? Name-letter preferences as indirect measures of self-esteem: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10463283.2014.980...
A few years ago someone told me that for anything other than within a especially formal garden design, most people prefer the visual of odd numbers of similar plants grouped together - from small bulbs planted at the scale of several centimetres, up to large trees planted at ten metres or more apart.
Of course, how you identify what most people 'prefer' is challenging - it may be more a reflection of what looks natural or random.
But, like how red cars are often spotted in groups of three, once I started noticing numbers of like plants clumped together, at various scales, it does seem to hold true.
Your preference may be more deep-seated than at a purely integer level. :)
Perhaps people seeing groups of items with a single middle element?
When composing mock api data, I do notice I tend to avoid arrays with an even number of elements
Apparently this 'odd numbers look better' stands regardless of proximity between each item. Keep an eye out for occurrences - it's a pretty subjective interpretation, I'm sure.
Some letters look better than others. The Japanese word ryuu ("dragon", for Japanese values of dragons) is written 竜. The alternate form 龍 is Chinese and not Japanese, but is specifically allowed in Japanese names, and is very popular there because it looks cooler.
Some letters are useless. The English letter C can be etymologically informative, but it has negative value in terms of indicating the pronunciation of a word, and the English alphabet already provides letters which unambiguously indicate the sounds that C commonly makes.
Some letters are obviously awkward. The English letter CH, unlike C, doesn't really have substitutes. But it's not a huge aesthetic success, and people get confused over whether to think of it as one thing or two things.
Objectively.
[Citation Needed]
While it looks like the study has been repeated enough to not be total quackery, there is still the question of what's the point. Does your preference for a particular letter has an effect on your choices?
I doubt the research about people preferring brands with the names in their letters has properly ruled out other variables, or would prove to be significant.
How many people actually give thought about what letters they like the most? I'm guessing the study was the first time the subjects were ever exposed to the thought of liking a letter. As such, ot seems reasonable to go for some point of reference that is simple and available, auch as your own name.
Also the effect was apparently not noticeable in Hurrican Rita.
There is also no mention of the percent of people starting with the letter from the given population - since the dataset for before the hurricane was much smaller (Katrina- ~300 before, ~4000 after), it's very likely that the proportions of named individuals drifted to the average, as what happens in larger datasets.
The number of hurricanes tested was also small - I.E. 3 , I'm not sure an effect can be inferred from such small numbers.
I wonder if it works aurally too, like would I prefer a thing called "eight-ball" because it's got the same syllable as "aitch" which is in my name?
This seems unlikely to be true as stated.
> Crucially, subjects are not aware that they are choosing letters from their name.
That is asinine. By what mechanism can a researcher make someone forget how to spell their name?
This is simply a theory that says "People are most comfortable and familiar with things which they are comfortable and familiar with." It's an essentially meaningless psychological observation.
Edit: typo fix (it'd -> I'd)
Not if it's actually studied psychology and has been verified again and again in experiments.
Besides, it doesn't work that way "gimme 3 letters", where ABC is a very easy and probable answer. And one random exchange with a sample of one and no controls ("I asked somebody") is not how you disqualify a theory ("so much for that theory").
Second sentence of the first paragraph.