Posted by abnry 7 days ago
Might I suggest adaptive difficulty? After getting 10, 15, 20 correct in a row it should scale up the difficulty immediately, rather than waiting for 100 in the basic level 1...
I suppose the words must be weighed, because other people in the thread with more correct words got a not much higher estimate.
From the website with just one more click - like one more wafer thin mint.
<snip> According to the Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition), there are approximately 171,476 words in current use.
However, most native speakers have an active vocabulary between 15,000 and 35,000 words. The Algorithm
We use Stratified Sampling. Instead of testing random words, we divide the language into 5 distinct difficulty bands based on frequency of use:
1. Core Basics~3,000 words
2. Intermediate~7,000 words
3. Advanced~10,000 words
4. Expert~25,000 words
5. The Obscure~40,000+ words
"If you answer 2 out of 3 'Intermediate' questions correctly, we estimate you know roughly 66% of the 7,000 words in that band."
Total Score = Σ (Accuracy in Band × Band Size) </clip>
Admittedly I had to guess several. It’s kind of an etymological deduction and estimation game at times.
My score: 78,000 words, 20/20/19/18/18.
No, I read about 97 words I already knew and guessed at a couple of made-up ones like "snollygoster".
Is this what passes for an advanced vocabulary in the US?
Also, it took far too many clicks per word, pretty tedious stuff.
A lot of words used in Software Engineering as metaphors helped.
Also one weird tip. If I didn't know the answer went for the negative description of human behaviour answer and I guess 50% chance rather than 1 in 4.
quixotic, scrooge, shangri-la, Uncle Tom, gargantuan, kafkaesque, blurb, milquetoast
and words like cyberspace were first used in fiction
once real people use them, they stop being fictional words