NovelGentry
4th May 2005, 01:59
After responding to a thread about the "loop theory" of political left and right and mentioning that I viewed political orientation more in a sphere form, I decided that maybe a new test, similar to politicial compass, but more in depth, was in order. I came up with a drawing of a "sphere" which would have three dimensional factors (although certainly more could be added with time (although it would get more and more confusing to look at). The way I see it there are three primary issues which decide politics. Political compass has two in order, economic and authoritative positions, however, neither of these play into the vast majority of other political issues such as environmentalism or social liberties, etc. So I have added the third axis (a z-axis if you will) to represent social liberties (environment will have to stay out for now).
The way the test would be done is that you would be posed a question from one of the categories. You would either disagree strongly, disagree, stay neutral, agree, or agree strongly. Each would factor in a step depending on how many questions we have (the more questions the more fine grained it becomes). It would then plot three points. The three points are easy enough to understand and display, however, from these three points we would have to come up with a final single point comprised of all three in the three dimensional space.
We could use a single straight line to determine the distance one is from another political figure or from one to another, however, this would be fairly inaccurate since it is placed inside a sphere. So what would be far more appropriate would be an arch length given two three dimensional point, the curve matching that of a perfect sphere. So here is what I need from anyone looking to help. A) a bunch of questions and a category that they would fall in, after we get maybe 20 questions from each category we can determine the factor which they will push one forwards or backwards so that they don't actually break out of the sphere if they were too extreme. B) Someone who knows how to calculate the vector length, preferably in a broken down formulat that could be represented in simple computer functions (many math functions are available, so things like roots, powers, etc are doable, and obviously simple math functions like subtraction and multiplication. If anyone would like to help provide any of these (especially the formulat for calculating the arch distance, that would be grand.
For example someone with the points 0 (x), 100 (y), 50 (z) would be located at center left and right, as high as they can go before hititng the edge of the sphere up and down, and depth within the sphere half way. So looking at the sphere from the front the point would not be visible, as it would lie half way up the center of the back portion of the sphere. Hope that all made sense.
Here's a graphic I drew up for simplified representation of points.
http://www.dotink.org/~gent/content/Images/DigitalArt/sphere.png
The way the test would be done is that you would be posed a question from one of the categories. You would either disagree strongly, disagree, stay neutral, agree, or agree strongly. Each would factor in a step depending on how many questions we have (the more questions the more fine grained it becomes). It would then plot three points. The three points are easy enough to understand and display, however, from these three points we would have to come up with a final single point comprised of all three in the three dimensional space.
We could use a single straight line to determine the distance one is from another political figure or from one to another, however, this would be fairly inaccurate since it is placed inside a sphere. So what would be far more appropriate would be an arch length given two three dimensional point, the curve matching that of a perfect sphere. So here is what I need from anyone looking to help. A) a bunch of questions and a category that they would fall in, after we get maybe 20 questions from each category we can determine the factor which they will push one forwards or backwards so that they don't actually break out of the sphere if they were too extreme. B) Someone who knows how to calculate the vector length, preferably in a broken down formulat that could be represented in simple computer functions (many math functions are available, so things like roots, powers, etc are doable, and obviously simple math functions like subtraction and multiplication. If anyone would like to help provide any of these (especially the formulat for calculating the arch distance, that would be grand.
For example someone with the points 0 (x), 100 (y), 50 (z) would be located at center left and right, as high as they can go before hititng the edge of the sphere up and down, and depth within the sphere half way. So looking at the sphere from the front the point would not be visible, as it would lie half way up the center of the back portion of the sphere. Hope that all made sense.
Here's a graphic I drew up for simplified representation of points.
http://www.dotink.org/~gent/content/Images/DigitalArt/sphere.png