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[cedmond]

[QUESTION] Meaning of PQI? Why is it abbreviated?

[Max Damage]

Pop Quiz Interrogation or something? Reminds me of the Voight-Kampff test in Blade Runner, kinda.

[cedmond]

good point

[Urk]

All of the titles are taken from the clips.

[Avatrix]

PQI

[Trynian]

I agree with avatrix -- "pop quiz" is almost certainly slang for a PQI, and I'm curious as well as to what it stands for. "I" is probably "interrogation", or maybe "index", if PQI is actually short for something like a "PQI test" or "PQI exam". "Q" may be "quotient", if it's measuring some value, or "question". "P" could be any of a number of things. "Pulse?" Not sure. Any else familiar with polygraph technology that could help us speculate?

Not really important, but I like figuring out these things.

[sherpa]

[gheritt]

I've been wondering the same thing, if PQI stands for something more technical. Here's a little about polygraphs, from Howstuffworks:

[Elec]

There was some spec about this in #beekeepers the other day. One person felt it might be Star Trek-ian for the device (like Polygraph Quantum Integrator). I agree though with the idea that PQI is the official acronym and Pop Quiz is the street slang for it. If such an examination became a common part of police investigation, it's likely that people would come up with a cute/clever name for it.

It should be noted that the PQI is what I would consider a "movie" polygraph. It's likely that this is a future setting and technology has improved, but a real polygraph is not especially similar to the PQI (I've had two). A polygraph is very pointed. The questions are discussed ahead of time, there are no surprises. The questions are asked and you answer yes or no. There is no extraneous banter. There are deliberate pauses between questions in order to get kind of a before/during/after period for each question. A baseline is typically established by having you answer several simple questions, one with a lie response. The device is very sensitive and many things can skew the results. For example, you can't move around during testing. A sneeze will produce a tremendous spike. Even doubt can produce a lie response. Suppose they ask whether you've ever stolen anything. If your internal response is to think about it and not be really certain whether you've EVER stolen something (and who knows whether you pocketed a candy bar when you were 5 or whether that matters) and you say no, it may come up as a lie, even if it's the truth. The polygraph works on the principle that intentionally lieing is stressful. You can see this on the chart printout - a building of tension as you think about having to lie, then relief once you've lied and can move on. Whoever said "The most convincing way to lie is to believe your lie" wasn't kidding.

Anyway, I suspect PQI is something like Polygraph Quantified Interrogation. Pretty sure about the P, fairly sure the I is Interrogation or Inspection or something along those lines. Not too sure about the Q, anybody else have a guess?

[jackiline_moss]

Nice post, Elec.
Off topic, just an odd coincidence/polygraph humor... http://www.polygraph.com/

[Avatrix]

[Mukaikubo]

Prevarication Quotient Indicator?

[Elec]

Modern polygraphs are actually computerized. The input devices go straight to a PC. The only reason you get a paper graph is because there is a banner printer connected to the PC and the examiner hits print at the end of each session. It would be a simple matter to change the program so that it does some sort of auto-ranging. You tell it where baseline is and it gives you a true or false beep on future questions based on where the input falls during those question periods. I suspect the reason they don't do this currently is because it'd take away human interpretation, which is important because the response is different for each person and only valid in a relative-to-itself sense. Maybe in the future, this isn't such a concern or they've managed to reliably automate it

[Snakeboarder00]

maybe it means problem quite interesting
http://www.ilovebees.com/surg.!store.primary.sector.mem.dmg.1.6.html

[sherpa]