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Human ability for randomness


BebopKid

Please pick a number between 1 and 20  

66 members have voted

  1. 1. Please pick a number between 1 and 20

    • 1
      0
    • 2
      2
    • 3
      2
    • 4
      2
    • 5
      1
    • 6
      3
    • 7
      2
    • 8
      3
    • 9
      5
    • 10
      2
    • 11
      5
    • 12
      2
    • 13
      7
    • 14
      8
    • 15
      3
    • 16
      1
    • 17
      8
    • 18
      4
    • 19
      5
    • 20
      1


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My original expectation was a bell curve with 10 being highest, but with 7 being higher than the curve and 13 being lower than the curve. As the data shows, this is not what I found to be the case.

 

For all interested, my sample size online and offline is now 101.

 

Here are some fancy statistics:

 

12.020 Average (Mean)

10.616 Geometric Mean

8.753 Harmonic Mean

13.000 Median

13.000 Mode

-0.348 Skewness

5.006 Standard Deviation from Sample

4.981 Standard Deviation from Population

4.275 Average Deviation

2505.960 Sum of Deviation Squares (SDS)

25.060 Variance of Sample (Normalized SDS)

24.811 Variance of Population

-0.987 Kurtosis

101 Sample Size

 

Fancy pie and bar charts (both in percent):

 

http://www.bryanleewilliams.com/images/pie-5-div.jpg

http://www.bryanleewilliams.com/images/bar-5-div.jpg

http://www.bryanleewilliams.com/images/pie-20-div.jpg

http://www.bryanleewilliams.com/images/bar-20-div.jpg

 

(Edited to fix image links)

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My first impulse was 13, then I found that number to be related with luck and discarded it. I ended up picking 17 influenced by the fact it is prime.

 

Numbers below 10 seemed too simple for me.

If I had though of 14 before clicking I would had taken it over 17 (but didn't come to mind). 14 is the third most picked!.

 

I am pretty normal it seems, quite depresing B)

 

 

I think that when you see a random numbe between A and B, you think of what happens when you pick B or something close (maximum results), that's why more people will take numbers above them.

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I just voted on this. But I have an admission to make. I didn't try to pick a random number.

 

Instead I tried to pick a number to counteract the patterns other people would make. I went for 4, and this seems to have worked, to a reasonable extent. But that's playing psychology, not trying to pick a random number. Unfortunately I didn't realise what I was doing until after I'd voted.

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I just voted on this. But I have an admission to make. I didn't try to pick a random number.

 

Instead I tried to pick a number to counteract the patterns other people would make. I went for 4, and this seems to have worked, to a reasonable extent. But that's playing psychology, not trying to pick a random number. Unfortunately I didn't realise what I was doing until after I'd voted.

So.....you couldn't pick 12........and why not? Poor twelve, always gets left out....its a dozen.....hey, even then it a baker's dozen so you don't even get 12.

 

Just unfair.

 

If only I could vote twice.... :lol:

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Next time we try to correlate the numbers with other things like favorite bidding system. Would mainstreamers tend to pick the more frequent numbers? Some surveys say that homosexuals are more likely to be left-handed than heterosexuals are. I've wondered if that could be explained by some people having a general tendency to ignore peer pressure.
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I just voted on this. But I have an admission to make. I didn't try to pick a random number.

 

Instead I tried to pick a number to counteract the patterns other people would make. I went for 4, and this seems to have worked, to a reasonable extent. But that's playing psychology, not trying to pick a random number. Unfortunately I didn't realise what I was doing until after I'd voted.

Actually I did the same (and succeeded). Also my first reaction before I saw the votes or any posts was that 13 and 17 would be the winners. Not sure why I guessed so well, maybe because I read an article or two years ago on how people pick lottery numbers.

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I voted 15. Why does almost no one pick 1 through 10?

We're greedy.

 

You may think you're picking a number between 1 and 20, but your brain is much more primordial than that. We leave some behind so that the person coming next will be satisfied with what she gets and not follow us and bash our brains in to get our stuff, but we still take the human's, er, lion's share of the goodies.

 

At least, that's my theory.

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