Patent Document ID: 9639816
Application ID: 13662347

Base Claim:
1. A method in a computing system, having a processor and memory, comprising: causing by the computing system to be presented via a network connection device to each of a plurality of people: a plurality of unlikely questions, each of whose affirmative answer is accurate for only a small percentage of the population, a fabrication gauge question whose affirmative answer is accurate for a known percentage of the population regardless of whether it is answered accurately by people to whom it is posed, and at least one substantive question; accessing, via the memory, a statistical expectation attributed to an affirmative answer to the fabrication gauge question; for each of the plurality of people: receiving, by the computing system, responses to the posed questions provided by the person; storing, in the memory, an identifier for the person among a set of person identifiers, the identifier associated with the responses; calculating, by the processor, a first percentage of the plurality of people who answered the fabrication gauge question in the affirmative; determining by the processor that the calculated first percentage exceeds the statistical expectation; determining, with the processor, for each person identifier, a number of unlikely questions to which the identified person answered affirmatively; with the processor, discarding person identifiers from the set of person identifiers by: (a) identifying, among the set of person identifiers, a proper subset associated with the largest number of unlikely questions answered affirmatively; (b) storing, in the memory, an indication to discard one or more of the person identifiers in the proper subset; (c) calculating a second percentage of people associated with undiscarded person identifiers who answered the fabrication gauge question in the affirmative; and (d) iteratively repeating (a)-(c) until the second percentage is within a predetermined range of the known percentage; and reporting answers to the at least one substantive question for only people among the plurality of people whose person identifiers are undiscarded.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the unlikely questions and fabrication gauge questions are caused to be posed in the same survey with substantive questions to which the people's responses are sought.