A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game
Question-asking is a critical aspect of human communications. Yet, little is known about the reasons that lead people to ask questions, which questions are considered better than others, or what cognitive mechanisms allow the ability to ask informative questions. Here, we take a first step towards i...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2023-01-01
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| Series: | Big Data and Cognitive Computing |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/7/1/26 |
| _version_ | 1797613526064300032 |
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| author | Gal Sasson Yoed N. Kenett |
| author_facet | Gal Sasson Yoed N. Kenett |
| author_sort | Gal Sasson |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Question-asking is a critical aspect of human communications. Yet, little is known about the reasons that lead people to ask questions, which questions are considered better than others, or what cognitive mechanisms allow the ability to ask informative questions. Here, we take a first step towards investigating human question-asking. We do so by an exploratory data-driven analysis of the questions asked by Akinator, a popular online game of a genie who asks questions to guess the character that the user is thinking of. We propose that the Akinator’s question-asking process may be viewed as a reflection of how humans ask questions. We conduct an exploratory data analysis to examine different strategies for the Akinator’s question-asking process, ranging from mathematical algorithms to gamification-based considerations, by analyzing complete games and individual questions. Furthermore, we use topic-modelling techniques to explore the topics of the Akinator’s inquiries and map similar questions into clusters. Overall, we find surprising aspects of the specificity and types of questions generated by the Akinator game, that may be driven by the gamification characteristics of the game. In addition, we find coherent topics that the Akinator retrieves from when generating questions. Our results highlight commonalities in the strategies for question-asking used by people and by the Akinator. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T06:56:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-f1c8abd13d76437081f561f7e8d138ab |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2504-2289 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T06:56:00Z |
| publishDate | 2023-01-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Big Data and Cognitive Computing |
| spelling | doaj.art-f1c8abd13d76437081f561f7e8d138ab2023-11-17T09:36:54ZengMDPI AGBig Data and Cognitive Computing2504-22892023-01-01712610.3390/bdcc7010026A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question GameGal Sasson0Yoed N. Kenett1Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, 3200003 Haifa, IsraelFaculty of Data and Decision Sciences, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, 3200003 Haifa, IsraelQuestion-asking is a critical aspect of human communications. Yet, little is known about the reasons that lead people to ask questions, which questions are considered better than others, or what cognitive mechanisms allow the ability to ask informative questions. Here, we take a first step towards investigating human question-asking. We do so by an exploratory data-driven analysis of the questions asked by Akinator, a popular online game of a genie who asks questions to guess the character that the user is thinking of. We propose that the Akinator’s question-asking process may be viewed as a reflection of how humans ask questions. We conduct an exploratory data analysis to examine different strategies for the Akinator’s question-asking process, ranging from mathematical algorithms to gamification-based considerations, by analyzing complete games and individual questions. Furthermore, we use topic-modelling techniques to explore the topics of the Akinator’s inquiries and map similar questions into clusters. Overall, we find surprising aspects of the specificity and types of questions generated by the Akinator game, that may be driven by the gamification characteristics of the game. In addition, we find coherent topics that the Akinator retrieves from when generating questions. Our results highlight commonalities in the strategies for question-asking used by people and by the Akinator.https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/7/1/26question askingtopic-modellingAkinatorLDABERTtext analysis |
| spellingShingle | Gal Sasson Yoed N. Kenett A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game Big Data and Cognitive Computing question asking topic-modelling Akinator LDA BERT text analysis |
| title | A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game |
| title_full | A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game |
| title_fullStr | A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game |
| title_short | A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game |
| title_sort | mirror to human question asking analyzing the akinator online question game |
| topic | question asking topic-modelling Akinator LDA BERT text analysis |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/7/1/26 |
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