What are the odds/probability of getting a yahoo answers question correct/best?

Question

One for you math boffins.

Answer 1

100%, if you have multiple yahoo identities. Notice some people with 80% best answers? That is beating the odds.

I think most normal people are around 5%. You should do a poll question on that. Then compile the data and publish in the National Review.

Answer 2

Well, the natural answer is that the better your answer, the better the odds. However, it's not quite like that in real life. Firstly, people tend to go for the first couple of answers. These are the people who are looking for points and will click any. I did see an answer that was completely off topic win because of this.

If you're the first to give a good answer, you're more likely to get the tenner.

So, there is sadly no mathematical solution, just a psychological one. At a guestimate, I'd say about 20% chance if you're in the top two answers, the other 60% shared evenly through the rest of the answers minus those obvious gaming for point answers. Note it's still a 40% chance even if the first two answers are not answering the question.

Answer 3

The odds are different than the probability. The odds are successes to failures and that would be determined by how many people answer a questions. The odds would be one to however many other people answer the questions not including your answer. The probability would be your answer, I am assuming one, divided by the number of total answers (including yours)for the particular question. But This still would not really be correct because there are a lot of bad answers and wrong answers and I don't know how to factor that in mathematically.

Answer 4

If the best answer was chosen completely at random then it would be simple to work it out as it would be 1 out of the total number of answers given, so that if there were 10 answers it was 1 in 10 or 100 answers it is 1 in 100. I wonder what the average number of answers is per question?

However, it is of course not random so it depends on a number of totally unpredictable variables such as your own knowledge, common sense and skill at finding the right answer on google, and the attitude/prejudices of the person choosing the best answer.

Answer 5

It depends on how good your answers are. Someone who answers with pointless one-liners, or submits answers which are unclear or spelled incorrectly, will generally not be selected as best answer. In contrast, someone who submits answers which are clear and well-researched, will have a better chance of being selected as the best. Someone who submits answers which contain explanations of and sources for the answer will do better than someone who submits only the answer and nothing else. Whether the answer is selected as best also depends on how quickly you answer the question: all other things being equal, the first answer will have a much better chance of being selected than the thirty-fifth.

There are things besides the quality of the answer affecting this as well - for instance what types of questions you answer. Someone who answers questions which are controversial or provocative (e.g. "why are all Christians so dumb?") will usually not be selected as best answer unless they agree with the person who asked the question, even if their answer was perfect in all other respects. Finally, one of the most significant factors in being selected as best answer is to vote for yourself - a lot of people simply forget about their questions once asked and don't bother to select a best answer, and unless the answer is particularly significant and insightful, it may go for weeks without being voted on at all. As such, you might be the only person who actually determines who gets best answer, simply because yours is the only vote cast. I'd guess that about half of my best answers were obtained through this method.

Answer 6

I think that you'd have to take into account the IQ of each answerer; the probablity of the correctness and detailed-ness of each answer; the relevancy of each answer to the question; the number of answers and how likely it is for the questioner to pick the most relevant, detailed and corect answer.
Otherwise it's probably impossible.

Answer 7

Ive answered 101 questions and ive got 4 best answers. Dont ask me what the maths is on that!

Answer 8

I would say 1 in 10 - 10% chance. 10 being the average number of answers per question that I have seen

Answer 9

The odds are stacked in favour of people who know how to use the system. I saw one racially motivated answer getting 80 votes and I know it was rigged cause only two other options were voted on!

Answer 10

I've gotten 2 out of 74 and one of those was because I was the only person who answered the question.
I guess I'm not that interesting or smart! *shrugs*