The Genius of Amateurs
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Here is a fun little quiz to evaluate how well you know English…
Could you count how many times the letter f appears in the following sentence?
These functional fuses have been developed after years of scientific investigation of electric phenomena, combined with the fruit of long experience on the part of the two investigators who have come forward with them for our meetings today.
People who have been speaking English since years underestimate the number of times a_?fa_? appears in the sentence. They do worse on this test than people who have just started learning English.
Ia_Tve never met a person who speaks fluent English to count more than 8 a_?fa_? in the sentence. The most common answer is 6 or 7.
The correct answer however is 11!
These functional fuses have been developed after years of scientific investigation of electric phenomena, combined with the fruit of long experience on the part of the two investigators who have come forward with them for our meetings today.
Embarrassing disclosure: I myself just got 7 the first time!
Why do experienced English speakers do worse than beginner English speakers on a simple English quiz?
Experienced speakers pronounce the word of with a “v” sound, and because of their habit of reading like they speak, they have more difficulty detecting the occurrences of the letter f than do inexperienced speakers.
As a result:
past experience
actually lowers performance!
Missing Insights
It’s the same with all other fields of endeavours - including blogging: you will miss a lot of “obvious” insights because of your long experience and hard-to-forget habits. So can anything be done about it?
The Genius of Amateurs
The solution is simple. Gather feedback from amateurs. Ask your new blog readers what can be done to improve your blog. Ask your neighbour who yet doesn’t know what blogs are to visit your website. Ask them:
- How to improve your blog layout
- What features should you remove from your blog
- What other topics would they like to read
You’ll be surprised by the insights you receive!
If you liked this post, buy me a beer. (Suggested: $3 a beer or $7.5 for a pitcher)Spread the word:
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Ha!
Feeling really stupid right now. I got 5.
And I was all proud of myself because I caught the f in the middle of scientific. :p
Posted 02 Jun 2007 #
Hehe - Thanks Shane. Looks like you are extremely prolific in English
Btw, everyone reading this comment should go visit Shane’s blog. He offers practical advice that you can use to zooomm your business to the next level!
Posted 02 Jun 2007 #
Out STUMBLING and thought I comment instead of buying you a beer. I do like the way you have that at the end of each post.
Posted 04 Jun 2007 #
I’ve seen that ‘quiz’ before but I’ve never thought of it with the application that you did. Great insight.
Also, what is the preview plugin that you’re using? It’s pretty neat.
Posted 05 Jun 2007 #
Thanks Greg for your kind words.
Not sure about the “preview” plugin - I’m not using any. Do you mean the text in “blockquote” (the text that is slightly indented and on light blue background)?
If so - my programmer has edited that using style sheets (CSS).
Posted 06 Jun 2007 #