[Fluffy]

GeeGee, on Jul 13 2007, 09:20 AM, said:

mikeh, on Jul 11 2007, 11:36 PM, said:

In terms of non-random human behaviour, some 30 years ago someone wrote a word on a piece of paper, concealed from me, and then asked me to pick a number between 1 and 10...out loud. I did so. I was asked to double it, and then to double that number and so on for several repetitions. I was then asked to name a vegetable, and I said 'carrot'.

The hidden word was.... 'carrot'.

I have since done this to perhaps 20 people over the years (you can tell that I am the life of the party ) and almost (but not all) have said 'carrot'... my last victim was only a few weeks ago.

I have no idea if it works in cultures other than Western Canada, altho the person who showed me this said that he'd read that about 70% of North Americans responded carrot on this test.

It has always struck me as weird. Heck, carrots are neither my favourite nor least favourite vegetable... and I didn't watch Bugs Bunny much as a kid, growing up in the UK

I got this one as well.....

I was asked 'what's 3 x 2?' '6', 'what's 5 + 1?', '6', 'what's 2 + 2 + 2?', '6'. 'Name a vegetable', 'carrot'. Just automatic, then the piece of paper turns up with the word 'carrot' on it.

So I thought I must try this on my friends:-

'What's 3 x 2'? '6'... and so on, then 'Name a carrot'. .

Geoff

They told me something similar in spanish, I went with the field as well, sadly I don't even remember the word.

[Cascade]

barmar, on Jul 14 2007, 02:58 AM, said:

I picked 6 because I figured most people would pick prime numbers and I wanted to go against the field.

On a slightly related note...

I'm trying to remember where I read it, but some book talked about the paradox that there are no "uninteresting" numbers. "Interesting" is defined as having some unique properties -- 1 is the multiplicative identity, 2 is the only even prime, 3 is the number of the trinity, etc. Eventually you encounter a number for which there are no known special properties; but it's interesting because it's the lowest such number.

I picked a prime because i thought everyone would choose 6.

The proof that there is no non-interesting number is usually presented as a proof by contradiction:

Assume there is a smallest non-interesting number ...

Now that is interesting!!! QED

[Al_U_Card]

So the "field" "bid" was 17......lol

[mike777]

I am really surprised so many got this one wrong.

[han]

lol Mike!

[BebopKid]

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):






(Edited to fix image links)

[Echognome]

Was the test was to see who could come up with the most random explanation?

[Fluffy]

Fluffy, on Jul 12 2007, 09:35 PM, said:

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


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.

[Blofeld]

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.

[BebopKid]

Echognome, on Jul 18 2007, 03:58 PM, said:

Was the test was to see who could come up with the most random explanation?

I just have too much time on my hands.

[Al_U_Card]

Blofeld, on Jul 18 2007, 05:00 PM, said:

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....

[helene_t]

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.

[cherdano]

Blofeld, on Jul 18 2007, 04:00 PM, said:

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.

[helene_t]

Me too, I voted 16.

[Gerben42]

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

[gwnn]

Square numbers rock. 9.

[jtfanclub]

Gerben42, on Jul 19 2007, 06:56 AM, said:

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.