There's a meme going around lately, suggesting some pattern to how we guess random numbers. A few bloggers are trying to "test" it by asking their readers to email them lists of random numbers, or conducting a "study" in their comments. Why not use a poll?
IMPORTANT: Don't use the graphic as an aid. First, think of a random number between 1 and 20. Then record your response.
I'll explain what this is all about next week.
More like this
Someone sent me some questions about information theory; or actually,
about some questions raised by a bozo creationist arguing about information
And I was. It was the dreaded Seven Random and Weird things meme! It's on the loose and I've been tagged.
The rules are:
This week's article on the "most random" number was the most popular post ever on Cognitive Daily. The stats aren't all in yet, but so far the post has been viewed at least 40,000 times.
The first key concept in probability is called a random variable.
Random variables are a key concept - but since they're a key concept of the
frequentist school, they are alas, one of the things that bring out more of
I used to monitor operators to check that they'd actually performed calibrations, and I learned to spot the fakes by the way they would pick what they thought to be a random value within a reasonable range. Apparently some values seem more 'random' than others.
This reminds me of a somewhat tongue-in-cheek poll carried out by David Chalmers a while back:
http://consc.net/notes/pick-a-number.html
I think this will be a bit biased by the fact that many readers will already have heard about this as it made the rounds (I just saw it on Pharyngula, so I didn't vote here). Still, interesting stuff, and you probably would have gotten the same result anyway.
I also saw it on pharyngula, but as soon as I saw the title and first line I thought of a number and that's the one I "voted for" in the poll. (which was 5 btw) When I thought of the number I hadn't a clue what it was all about.
I also think I know what this is about, but that was the number I always pick anyway (there's a story behind it) so I didn't cheat by choosing it.
It shouldn't really be a surprise that humans are bad at picking a "random" number, since they fail at such tasks as: is "1001" more or less random than "1011"?
Analysis:
(n=252)
1 11 6 10 11 11 16 5
2 8 7 24 12 12 17 44
3 9 8 13 13 17 18 16
4 6 9 9 14 17 19 17
5 5 10 7 15 7 20 4
Times Numbers Share (%) each Anomaly
44 17 17.46 3.49
24 7 9.52 1.90
17 13 14 19 6.75 1.35
16 18 6.35 1.27
13 8 5.16 1.03
12 12 4.76 .95
11 1 11 4.37 .87
10 6 3.97 .79
9 3 9 3.57 .71
8 2 3.17 .63
7 10 15 2.78 .56
6 4 2.38 .48
5 5 16 1.98 .40
4 20 1.59 .32
I think I see what you've done, Roy. Too bad the tabs don't line up -- it looks like we've got 3.49 times as many 17s as would be expected. I'd be interested to see a similar analysis on a set of random numbers.
@Dave Munger
I cut and pasted your results to a flat ASCII file, then ran a Perl script to produce the analysis.
Send me an email address and I will send the script.
i chose 17, because it's my b-day and my lucky number, go figure.
I chose 17 as well - because it's the most random.
;-)
17 is the most random because it is prime. In fact the top 4 are prime numbers, as of Monday morning :)