I decided that if I was going to study dinosaur aesthetics, I ought to know more about which dinosaurs are foremost in our minds, to see who the average Joe’s favorite dinosaur is. I decided to use my accumulated dinosaur knowledge to see if I could guess someone’s favorite species just by intuition alone.
The participants filled out a survey outlining the extent and the origin of their interests in dinosaurs in general, then let me read their palms for further insights into their personalities. Using this information along with the sensitivity to dinosaurania that I has honed over the past several years, I then attempted to intuit their favorite dinosaurs. My success rate was over 10%!
(Please note that I do not claim to have any special psychic powers or any magical ability to read palms. I just used his normal, everyday intuition to try to figure out what kinds of people like which kinds of dinosaurs.)
The project ended up providing reams of data, not just about what dinosaurs are the most popular, but also about the different levels of knowledge and interest people have in dinosaurs. The project’s primary documentation is in the form of a book (see below), which provides a more extensive summary of the results.
The original questionnaire can be found here. Try it out on your friends and see how good YOUR dinosaur intuition is!
Action pics of Chris intuiting people’s favorite dinosaurs (he wore the blacked-out pink sunglasses so he couldn’t see what people wrote on their forms):
You can also download the now-outdated, but still-interesting 2009 poster of the project.
Chris Wildrick 