Talk:Duck test

no mention of monty python and the holy grail? Dsol 03:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

If everyone got to add their favorite example of how to tell if something is a duck, how long would this page be? --Mgreenbe 14:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Link on "Richard Patterson" is apparently for a different guy of the same name. Not sure if the one cited here merits his own article, or if the link should just be removed. 71.246.221.16 05:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there any relationship to the Turing Test? Seems to me that the Turing Test is applying the Duck Test to consciousness. --Andrew Eisenberg 15:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

No. I don't think so, but maybe I just didn't read far enough down. Cut and paste applicable info here, for those who are not interested much in computer intellegence (me).Travb 22:30, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that you removed the link to the Turing Test. I think the Turing test is a form of duck test.

The duck test is a specific form of inductive reasoning whereby one can 
infer the nature of an unknown based upon its outwardly visible traits.

The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to 
perform human-like conversation.

Essentially, the Turing Test is used to determine if a computer can "think" or is "intelligent" by looking at external characteristics (ie- communication using words). Perhaps the article's first sentence doesn't describe the test correctly by only mentioning conversation.Andrew Eisenberg 02:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Power to ya. I will add it back. No big deal. Travb (talk) 02:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The Turing test tests whether a computer algorithm can imitate human conversation -- not whether can "think". "Asking whether a computer can think is like asking whether a submarine can swim" -- Dijkstra. The Turing test challenges the contrapositive of the duck test. The duck test says: "if it talks like a duck, it is a duck." To pass the duck test means the statement is true, i.e. the bird really is a duck. To pass the Turing test means to contradict the statement: "if it is not a human, it does not talk like a human", i.e. the thing talking is actually not a human. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-08-26 08:58Z

This concept seems a bit to me like 'judging a book by its cover.' --  Denelson83  07:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Your objection has been duly noted. That's why they say "probably" and not "certainly." Inductive reasoning is inherently imperfect in this form; you can never be sure, based solely on the observable traits of the bird in question, that is certainly a duck. But even though it might not be a duck, you're going to think it's a duck, and that's probably a reasonable assumption to make.

I don't really think the duck thing in Holy Grail was related to this duck test; that was a quite different convoluted piece of sillyness.--jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 19:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Remove it to talk, WP:BB, if you don't think it has anything to do with the Duck Test, here let me do it for you:

Monty Python lampooned the "duck test" in their film Monty Python and the Holy Grail in order to show that faulty conclusions can be reached by this type of backwards reasoning. In the film, a woman is accused of being a witch. Since witches are burned at the stake, they must be made of wood, since it burns as well. Wood floats on water, as do ducks. Therefore, if the woman weighs the same as a duck, she must be able to float on water, which means she is made of wood, and consequently must be a witch.

Travb (talk) 04:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

While reading this article I got really confused when it suddenly went rambling on about a war without making clear what the relevance to this article is. This could be improved upon... 145.48.211.205 14:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that the whole paragraph can be removed. it is out of the scope of the "duck test" meaning. It would be the same if we start writting about personal life of the coiner of the term. --Cacuija (my talk) 20:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It was coined by James Whitcomb Riley who wrote in one of his poems that "when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."

Provide the poem's title and some other sourced proofs for this attribution. --Che Baraka 00:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

This article is clearly full of anti-communist rhetoric. I don't think the word "subversion" fits th NPOV principle... João Jerónimo (talk) 13:04, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It dosen't smell like a duck?--( fi ) 01:23, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

What do ducks smell like? --DWR^talk 19:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I expect they smell like the ponds or rivers they swim in 20:00, 9 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.79.104.233 (talk)

And they smell like? --DWR^talk 19:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Same as the ducks. 70.109.124.172 (talk) 14:46, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

(start)

To Patterson and other United States officials, many traits of the democratically elected Arbenz government showed that it was determined to implement revolutionary reforms. In their view, the Arbenz government's censorship of the dissident press, preference of state investment over private capital investment, agrarian reform, anti-imperialist measures, and democratic reforms (such as the legalization of labor unions) qualified it as communist. U.S. officials did not need hard evidence of communist subversion to believe that the Arbenz government was communist, instead inferring the existence of communist subversion because agrarian reform (or agrarian revolution) was a significant factor in Mao Zedong's communist revolution in China, leading communists to attain power in 1949.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the United States Central Intelligence Agency to sponsor a coup of the Arbenz government to eliminate the supposed communist threat, ultimately causing a long civil war.

The term duck test is still frequently used in the United States to describe the process of attributing the identity of an unknown based on its traits, especially in certain forms of computing.

The test is often used to identify something that is supposedly bad, and to justify the use of inductive logic in meting out punishment.

(end)

Thank you for the concern about original research. I would suggest adding an original research tag to this article and discussing changes before deleting other editors contributions per the policy WP:PRESERVE. Since the deletion of 1/3 of the article is your first edit to this article, maybe you are not aware of the history of this event. All of the information here is well known and can easily be sourced. Ikip (talk) 23:06, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Indefinetly blocked editor. Ikip, the problem is not the accurate description of the history of CIA involvement in any particular country, but the connection made between the history and the Duck Test. There is no reliable secondary source cited connecting the two, and the result is WP:synthesis. If the problem was just unsourced content, I would not have deleted the content. WP:synthesis is a much more serious problem than lack of citations. Unless you can supply WP:reliable secondary sources that clearly connect the Duck Test and USA foreign policy mistakes, that material must come out of the article. That is foundational WP policy. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 11:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I fact tagged then removed the section in red. You have some really good solid points Mr. Schosha. Thank you. I was most troubled by the unsourced, broad statment saying they know how "Patterson and other United States officials" think. The information is facually correct, but the wording makes it sound like that is the way Patterson himself thinks, which I know is also factually correct, but it is unsourced. Thank you again Mr. Schosha. Ikip (talk) 14:41, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Removed again by now indefinetly blocked user, now restored:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the United States Central Intelligence Agency to sponsor a coup of the Arbenz government to eliminate the supposed communist threat, ultimately causing a long civil war.^[1][2]

Later references to the duck test include Richard Cardinal Cushing, who used the phrase in 1964 in reference to Fidel Castro.^[3][4]

Ikip (talk) 16:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

New version:

The term "ducks" was originally coined by Budget Director Richard G. Darman to refer to revenue-raising measures that the administration would vigorously oppose because, to the average person, they are clearly tax increases. Darman said the appropriate test for defining a tax increase is, "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck."

Washington Post, Administration Says It May Accept End of Some Tax Breaks, Paul Blustein, Mar 31, 1989 [1]

Ikip (talk) 14:56, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I removed this unreferenced sentence to talk:

It is unclear who coined the saying, although its creator could have adopted Occam's razor, a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham.

Since it is not referenced, this seems like specualtion on the part of the wikipedia contributior. Ikip (talk) 15:37, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I translate this page in french. Have a nice day ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.74.137.68 (talk) 19:24, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The image at the top of the page is labeled "Looks, swims, and quacks like a duck, but is actually a photograph", yet I have thus far been entirely unable to induce it to produce a quacking sound. I have not yet tried to get it to swim because I rather value my monitor, but I highly suspect that it won't. Therefore, this image and its caption do not serve very well as an illustration for the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.208.11.99 (talk) 07:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Picture looks like a drake to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.154.61.147 (talk) 22:06, 31 March 2010 (UTC)