xkcd Survey
xkcd Survey
[A simple comic with text only. The click here part is inside a black frame.] Introducing The xkcd Survey A search for weird correlations Note: This survey is anonymous, but all responses will be posted publicly so people can play with the data. Click here to take the survey Or click here, or here. The whole comic is a link, because I still haven't gotten the hang of HTML imagemaps.
This strip was referenced upon the availability of preorders for How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems . A new banner appeared at the top of the site to announce that preorders were available; at the right of the banner was a blue box labelled "Click here to preorder", followed immediately below by "Or click anywhere. I still haven't figured out HTML imagemaps."

As the comic image states, it links to a survey created with Google Forms , containing a series of questions. The questions range from mundane typical survey questions such as “Do you have any food allergies?”, to rather strange, such as “Fill this text box with random letters by randomly mashing keys on your leopard.” (See 1530: Keyboard Mash ).
The stated goal of the survey is to “create an interesting and unusual data set for people to play with”. A strange data set is a ripe opportunity for a sampling of readers. It's also supposed to be “a search for weird correlations” – presumably the goal is to be able to say things like “people who have been skydiving are (more/less) likely than average to dislike cilantro”. (See also 882: Significant about finding presumably-spurious correlations between unrelated data.)
If the data is ever released, this explanation will be updated, but as of April  2022, this has not happened.
HTML image maps is a technique for marking up areas of an image on a web page, such that each area can be a link without the whole image being a link. Randall could have used this type of image map to make only the “Click here to take the survey” button be a link, and none of the rest of the image. But he cannot get the hang of it (or knowing his skills, does not wish to take the time to learn it). Not getting the hang of HTML image maps was also referenced on the banner for his book tour for the what if? book
The title text is a joke off of Big Data , which is a name for analysis of a set of data that includes a huge amount of information. He also says "for a big planet" because the Earth is big. [ citation needed ]
The survey is closed, and the questions replaced with the text: "The xkcd survey is now closed. Thank you for all your answers! Response data is being collected and will be posted soon." As of February 2022, the same caption is still there, with no indication of exactly how soon the data is intended to be posted. (Apparently, Randall crashed google forms, so the data is taking a long time to be retrieved (see this reddit thread) - much like his breaking of Wolfram Alpha ] during answering a reader's question on what if? )
A recreation of the survey can be found here on Google .
The recreation's data can be found live here.
It started with the following statement:
This is an anonymous survey. After it's done, a database of everyone's responses will be posted.
There's no specific reason for any of the questions. The goal is to create an interesting and unusual data set for people to play with. This is obviously not going to be a real random sample of people, but in the interest of getting cooler data, if you're sharing this with friends, try sending it to some people who wouldn't normally see this kind of thing!

WARNING: This survey is anonymous, but your answers WILL BE MADE PUBLIC. Depending what you write, it's possible that someone may be able to identify you by looking at your responses. None of these questions should ask about anything too private, but don't write anything that you don't want people to see. If you're not comfortable answering a question, just skip it.
Note: The order of the possible answers (the list of possibilities) was random, and changed every time the page is reloaded. So do not try to fix the order here below...
[A simple comic with text only. The click here part is inside a black frame.] Introducing The xkcd Survey A search for weird correlations Note: This survey is anonymous, but all responses will be posted publicly so people can play with the data. Click here to take the survey Or click here, or here. The whole comic is a link, because I still haven't gotten the hang of HTML imagemaps.
This strip was referenced upon the availability of preorders for How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems . A new banner appeared at the top of the site to announce that preorders were available; at the right of the banner was a blue box labelled "Click here to preorder", followed immediately below by "Or click anywhere. I still haven't figured out HTML imagemaps."
