Polar presentation of detailed results in Aspie-quiz

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What I visualized when I read this was a bar graph on the left with 4 bars reaching out to the left (high scores on NT show big bars in the graph stretching left) and another bar graph on the right with 4 bars reaching out to the right (high scores on AS show big bars in the graph stretching right). So -- I'm not going to upload a gif, but to show it in an ASCII art mode an ASPIE might look like this:



I'm not certain, but I suspect this might be more transparent for a lot of people compared to the octagonal map. Though I do have some ideas about making the octagonal map more intuitive also... My suggestion would be to move the middle-labels for the 2 axis (the horizontal NT-AS axis and the vertical intelligence-biology axis) -- bring those labels out away from the labels for the individual aspects being measured - you might even use a graphic arrow pointing away from the edge of the octagon or alternatively curly braces from the label to the octagon like { } to indicate that these are axis.

My recommendation for labeling the intelligence-biology axis would be "intellectual-physical" or possibly "intellectual/creative-physical/mechanical".

I'm also a bit confused about how the numbers are tabulated. I can't seem to find any information about the system being used to generate these numbers and it doesn't look like they're just being added or averaged -- it looks like there's a complex method going on, but I can't figure out (or find reference to) what that system is... I took the test a 2nd time today because the first time I'd taken it some of my answers were based on decisions I've made to consciously alter my behavior (instead of my natural tendencies) and so I wanted to see what a more accurate reflection would be if I simply answered honestly on the basis of my natural tendencies. My scores changed from "you seem to have some traits of both" to 116 aspie - 61 NT "you are very likely an aspie".

Anyway looking at this in the PDF is confusing to me and I couldn't find any explanation of the system, so I was hoping you could offer some clarification.

This is my overview -- which seems fairly straightforward, so these scores are the 0-10 scale that would be used in the octagonal graph (with the NT scores reversed).

Alternately if I used the bar charts mentioned before, it'd look something like this (rounded to the nearest whole point and please correct me if I'm applying the individual bars incorrectly - I guessed that "aspie disability" is the measure being reversed to create "NT talent"):



What confuses me most though is the breakdown for individual sections of the quiz. Like this Motor section as an example:



I understand the first 3 columns here fine. Which question was being answered, the content of the question, and how you answered (which has an associated 0-2 score as a whole number).

:: Questions ::

1) Columns 4 & 5 appear to be average results for people who are either NT or AS. The problem with it being an average here is that for question 3 it says the average for NTs is 2.06 ... which isn't normally possible when averaging numbers that range from 0-2, you could only have an average between 0 and 2.

2) How is the number 7 in "2 of 7" produced? It's obviously not the number of questions or the sum of scores. I just can't think of a logical way to produce that number.

3) How is the number 2 in "2 of 7" produced? (as above)

4) Am I correct in assuming the 0-10 score in the summary is achieved by using factional math to turn 2/7 in this case into x/10 ?
(2/7 = 0.28 x10 = 2.8) -- except the math would be wrong... hrm... Is it rounded in the section summary and unrounded in the overall summary?

5) What does "average" mean in the overall summary when it says "above/below average" - is that average for NTs, average for AS people or does it depend on the section? Might it be possible to include average NT and AS scores next to my scores in the overall summary, similar to the values shown for the individual sections to give us a better idea what the overall summary means?

6) This may be specific to motor, but why does it say that my NT score is higher than my AS score if the answers I gave were almost identical to the average aspie answer and a lot further from the average NT answer?

-- I'd have just looked up the answers for these if I'd found some names for the methods used to generate these numbers like "P-Values", which I know wouldn't have been the name, but as an example is something I could have looked up on Wikipedia or google ...

Wow! That modification seriously works wonders. I like it.

I was thinking of something like that myself, but figured that everyone would prefer shapes... it seems much easier to read though!

I like it. An excellent idea. I suppose I can use both methods so people can study the one the like the best. The octagon still has the advantage of producing a single figure that have specific looks depending on overall profile.



Yes, numbering vertically would be a good idea. That way people see that it is two posiitive axis'es rather than one.



I like the first one.

Yes, it is a complex method. The quiz contains a matrix of weight-factors (correlations) between every question and each of the eight groups. The numbers are generated by accumulating all the products between answer and weight for each question to generate each of the numbers tabulated. IOW, each question contributes (to some extent) to each number tabulated. To make it even more confusing, the numbers are normated to a 0-10 scale by dividing them with max-score and multiplying them with 10.



This is also a little more complex. First, the figures here are from PCA (factor-analysis) of previous versions. The Aspie weight is the primary axis and NT weight is the secondary (factor loadings are multiplied by 100). Therefore, the range is not 0-2, but could be a little higher. Another factor is that questions that are not answered are not part of the calculation, and thus the significans of other questions will increase.



It is 1.5 rounded to nearest integer (2).



No

The weights used to calculate the Aspie-NT scores and the 0-10 summary scores are calculated in widely different manners.

The weights for Aspie-NT scores are generated by feeding the raw-data from previous versions into a PCA (Principal Components Analysis) program. The raw loadings are used directly as weights. IOW, these have nothing to do with my extensive work on groupings.

The weights for the tabular presentation is based on correlations between my groups and questions (as described above). The groups have been created by using inter-correlations between questions. The presentation in the groupped reports present the correlations between every question and every group. Questions are usually placed in the group where they have the highest correlation, but some manual grouping is also used when the inter-correlation method seems to fail. Trying to group the questions have been one of the most time-consuming tasks.



It's only based on the number. I think 0-3 is below, 4-6 is average and 7-10 is above (or something like that).



Yes. This is the idea I presented before on the octagon. I don't have these numbers yet, but I will add them by recalculating peoples 0-10 scores for past versions and then averaging these for various different groups.

so this (mine) is an aspie result?
[img]C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Sinead\My%20Documents\My%20Pictures[/img]

Yeah, I do think there's an advantage to the octagon. And I think it can be made visually more "transparent". Something I forgot to mention is you might want to rotate the text on either side for the words "neurotypical" and "aspie" 90%. Having those labels rotated might also make it more obvious that you've divided the octagon on a horizontal axis and keep people from running those labels together with the individual aspect labels and getting confused that way. i.e.



Might be a bit more transparent than the current presentation for the octagon. I would have actually "rotated" the word Aspie, but I don't think the forum gives me a way to do that -- so this is as close as I could get without going to a graphic.



yep, that's another good idea



Glad I could help.

Hi HC. You'll have to either upload the image somewhere (like flikr.com or photobucket.com) or convert it into ASCII art for us to make any comments on it. The URL for your image here (C:\Documents and Settings ... etc) is on your computer at home(?) so it's not accessible to the forum for us to view.

Okay, thanks. I read through some of the information on PCA on Wikipedia and it's more math/statistics than I'm generally accustomed to working with and much of what they've written (on Wikipedia at least) seems to be heavily interrelated and depend a lot on people having academic backgrounds in higher math (calculus, multi-linear algebra, etc). So although statistical analysis interests me, much of this seems to be above me in a way that's likely not going to change quickly.



I'm not sure if that helps. heh... So the 1.5 is the 1.5 from the aspie column of question 4? And... I guess I was wrong about the 7 not being the sum of values -- it seems to be the sum of the values in the Aspie + NT columns? So 1.37+0.69+2.06+1.5(aspie)+1.37 (gathered from cumulative responses to previous tests & versions) = 7?

What still confuses me about this is I'm expecting "2 of 7" to reflect something like "your responses match the responses of other AS people 2 out of 7 times" (or similar) ... though if AS people usually provide a 0 response and the 2 is the 1.5 from question 4 rounded up, then that would mean that even someone who's responses matched exactly the responses of the average AS person, it would tell them "your answers here don't look in any way autistic". So ... I must still be missing something in my interpretation of the section summary.




Oh okay, so it's entirely possible that an average NT person would score "below average" for some of the autistic factors and vice versa an average AS person might score "below average" on some of the NT factors. So in mine where it says "average" for most of my factors may still be an indication of autistic qualities because the average NT result for that factor is below average.



Cool, thanks, I think that would definitely help me better understand the results.