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Designed for Use
book

Designed for Use

by Lukas Mathis
June 2011
Intermediate to advanced
344 pages
8h 35m
English
Pragmatic Bookshelf
Content preview from Designed for Use

Don’t Influence the Tester

Wilhelm von Osten was a German math teacher who lived around the early 1900s. As a hobby, he trained horses. You can probably see where this story is going: he tried to teach his horse how to do math. To everybody’s astonishment, the horse (aptly named Clever Hans) quickly learned to do a number of reasonably complex math calculations: additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions, and date calculations. The horse was capable of understanding math questions asked in plain German, and it could also read math questions if they were written on a piece of paper.

Obviously, the horse couldn’t write down the results. Instead, it tapped the correct number with its hoof.

Psychologist Oskar Pfungst became suspicious and ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781941222980Errata