How do we learn of a new subject? Imagine you talk to a doctor and he tells you of a new disease you may have, say “Cystic Fibrosis”. Now if you are like most of us then you know very little of it, if anything at all.
Without going to your favorite search engine, let’s do some exercise here. What kind of questions would you ask your doctor at the point he mentions “Cystic Fibrosis” to you? Please take a couple of minutes and write them down, in the order you would ask them (please post in comments area the questions you wrote down).
For example, if the subject matter was “Lyme Disease” some questions may be:
What is Lyme Disease?
What are Lyme disease symptoms?
What are the treatments for Lyme disease?
How do I know if I have Lyme disease?
Can I Prevent Lyme Disease?
Is Lyme Disease curable?
Notice then when we learn of a new subject, we first start with basic questions. Once we acquire some knowledge, we build upon it and move to more complex questions. Why is this important? Because I don’t know if you realized or not, but others have already went through the exact same process you are going through. For example, most likely the questions you wrote for “Cystic Fibrosis” were asked many times by others who have learned about that subject before you, others who were in the same position as you were in our example (at the doctor’s office), or others who went through the learning process maybe for a school project, or maybe because they found a friend or a family member had this disease, etc, etc.
Now what if instead of coming up with basic questions, one by one, you could tap into other people’s questions (OPQ) in an instant? How would that change your view of things?
Early on in my life I used to learn of new subjects all the time (I still do of course). Instead of coming up with basic questions I asked myself “what other people have already asked about this subject?” By doing that, I would have an instant advantage on those who started from the beginning. Not only that, but I also realized allot of people had better questioning skills then I had. Tapping into their questions gave me a different perspective and an “unfair advantage” of those who did it all on their own.
So back to our example, with Assista, typing the subject “Cystic Fibrosis” will give you the following questions and more. Each question is then linked back to the page/s where the question was originally found, question highlighted, page anchored, letting you learn from the discussions of others in relation to the question.
What is the cause of cystic fibrosis? (see results sample above)
How Is Cystic Fibrosis Diagnosed?
How is Cystic Fibrosis Spread?
Why is cystic fibrosis testing recommended?
What is the meaning of cystic fibrosis?
How is osmosis involved with cystic fibrosis?
Why is the cystic fibrosis gene so frequent?
What is the basic pathophysiology of cystic fibrosis?
What are two symptoms of Cystic Fibrosis?
What Are the Signs and Symptoms of Cystic Fibrosis?
Why do some people with Cystic Fibrosis have clubbed fingers?
Do you have Cystic Fibrosis?
Does ours outrank Cystic fucking Fibrosis?
How many people have Cystic Fibrosis?
Should I be screened for cystic fibrosis?
Why does a person get cystic fibrosis?
What Makes Cystic Fibrosis a Genetic Disease?
Should I Have a Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Test?
When do cystic fibrosis symptoms begin to appear?
Is there still a gender gap in cystic fibrosis?
Is cystic fibrosis going to effect my love life?
Is there a test for the cystic fibrosis gene?
What other names do people use for Cystic Fibrosis?
Where can I find additional information about cystic fibrosis?
What type of DNA changes might cause cystic fibrosis?
Does tubefeeding help cystic fibrosis patients maintain a healthy weight?
How can Cystic Fibrosis be explored with the Biology Workbench?
Is the hemochromatosis gene a modifier locus for cystic fibrosis?
What precautions should be taken in patients with cystic fibrosis?
How does Assista compare to Yahoo Answers? First, these are totally different systems. “Yahoo Answers” is more of a Q&A type site where they only list questions from their own database while Assista aggregates content (questions) from every web page on the internet, including all of “Yahoo Answers” questions. “Yahoo Answers” is looking for the best answer for a question while Assista recognizes there may not be the best answer, or there may be many answers, many view points, or no answer at all. While Yahoo is searching for answers, Assista is searching for related discussions, or what we call a “Thoughtstream”.
On a side by side comparison, a picture is worth a thousand words:
(Yahoo Answers results on left, Assista on right)
How Assista is different then an FAQ Search? FAQ stands for “Frequently Asked Questions” while Assista is searching for all questions and in particular, highest quality questions first and discussions related to them.
Assista is a search engine, it gives you an unfair advantage on education. Instead of learning from the bottom you get an instant bird’s-eye view on a subject, topic. You also get to leverage OPQ, in particular of those who have better questioning skills then you do.
Assista is also my life project, built by Jeff Bhavnanie and our world class team for the last three years. It has hundred of millions of questions in the database and will grow to over a billion questions within the next 12-24 months. It has a discussion board on each question, a messaging system for users, rss supported, and will have a wikipedia-style answering system as well. We have a number of NLP technologies behind the scenes (a well known tech investor/banker, when saw it, said “the best NLP I’ve ever seen”), 120+ servers (before we’re even live), and it was built with scalability and performance in mind. Assista is currently in private Alpha and we hope to release it sometime before the end of year.
Improving questioning skills today will result in a better world tomorrow.
Via The Seattle times:
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