Caterina Fake's Hunch.com launches | Hacker News Reader

Caterina Fake's Hunch.com launches

hunch.com

48 pointsadamhowell35 comments

Every question I have answered so far it says I am with 50/33/25 % of people depending if there were 2 3 or 4 answers. I really doubt that.

Not for me.. I did 440 questions, and I'm really impressed by the stats after each.

I'm getting realistic numbers.

Yes, I find it hard to believe that 50% of quiz takers have a lucky charm.

I signed up and that appears to have fixed it.

I've been on the beta test, but so far it looks like a solution in search of a problem.

We think that you will love Hunch. It may not be awesome yet -- a lot of people have to contribute to it before it knows much of anything. But it will be awesome later. Love it anyway. Love it now.

I'm just not that into it.

I'm confused - how is this helping me make a decision?

I answered a bunch of question until it told me I was finished, and then gave no further instructions. I went back to the homepage, and was presented with yet more questions.

I tried to start asking it a question, i.e. "what pet should I get?", using the top right search box. However, I can't get it to return results for anything, even the generic keyword "pets".

On top of all this, the obviously fake demographic data means I'm not getting any value whatsoever out of the experience.

What am I missing?

I thought the same thing until I made an account and found topics relevant to me. The front page is filler.

Thanks, I was quite confused. I don't think I'll make an account, but good to know there is some kind of functionality.

>The front page is filler.

They should change that.

I filled out some questions and then when I signed up, my history was lost. Disappointing.

Looks cool, but get "Hunch encountered an error. Please Refresh the page to retry." each time.

Probably under high load at the moment.

Successtrophe!

http://www.hunch.com/should-i-start-my-own-business/

I am sorry but I don't take decisions like that.Infact most people don't follow decision trees. They go by instinct and then rationalize.

This looks like a massive collection of Facebook-like quizzes. No thanks!

I'm torn. I hate those annoying quizzes, but at least this site is doing something useful with the results. They are collecting demographic information, building statistical models, etc. To me, it's kind of like reCAPTCHA. If you're going to have a necessary evil (CAPTCHAs or people addicted to silly quizes), you might as well "help humanity" in the process...

I'm also quite impressed with the presentation. It seems like a really solid app.

Reminds me of my AI class assignment last year in CLIPS. I'm guessing there taking the same concepts that have been around for a long time and applying them to a very general setting with a healthy dose of people power to constantly improve it.

Hunch is fun to play with. However, it really needs more data and more people to be truly helpful when it comes to decison-making. I say, give it some time. If it catches on, it could be really cool.

I loved "Do you procrastinate?" and one answer was "I'll come back to this question later". Nice.

It's sooo slow. Best to wait a few days I think.

to be not prepared to traffic on launch is not a great idea... if you are well known in the field and visits will start to be high at day 0

It seems to be nice and speedy now... much speedier than it was 15 minutes ago, at least!

looks really cool. I was able to answer a bunch of questions, half way through got an error The questions (at least the ones I answered) were quite relevant. They also have a API. Would be interesting to see what mashups can be done with the API.

edit: One of the decision topics I tried:

Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?

The questions were relevant, and I found this quite interesting: Do you have long nails that would impair your being able to use the touchscreen effectively?

Whats the best profession for me ? - 1. Web Developer 2. Computer Engineer 3.Engineer ... , phew, I am glad to know that hunch,com vindicates my decision to be a computer programmer. If the results were different...

http://www.hunch.com/professions/all/?h=3610.1482363.1482333....

So I did the where do you want to go on vacation one and got back Tokyo and Italy, which really are my top two choices to vacation next time I have the chance. A similar deal happened with movie suggestions.

Hunch seems like it's really good for telling you what you already know, without directly asking you your opinion about it. Besides that it seems to have an interesting side effect of psychological confirmation (I felt it too), even though rationally, all it means is that Hunch found a pattern of association that you fit into.

I mean, it's not like it actually gave you any _reason_ that you should be a web developer or that I should go to Italy...

I'm pretty much capable of making my own decision, thanks.

Btw the site looks like a big compilation of quizzes ... shrug

It misses tea/coffe for "What do you typically tend to drink when you eat dinner at home?" Ehh.

A web service to help me decide? I'm not the guy you are looking for.

Thanks anyway.

I'd say it's pretty good considering how long it's been up. It'll only get better. I typed in 'price of fish' and it came up with a list of fish & chip shops. So not totally useless.

This was nothing like I thought it would be.

It's fun for a few minutes, but there's no reason I would ever go back again. Reminds me of 43things in that way.

How is this thing supposed to make money?

Some of the questions are things like "what pair of men's sunglasses should I buy?" I'm guessing that the products at the end are paid placement (or will be) and there will eventually be a click to buy button.

Which suggests that the suggestions aren't exactly accurate, and hence it's not much of a service.

I suppose this one is just a little to visionary for me to understand.

It's in their FAQ.

Seems like it lies and says 1/n people agreed with you when it doesn't have enough data. I've gotten 1/n so many times.

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