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So. I have done a similar thing for a while now. I call it adversarial selection. I ask a participant(p) to guess a number [1,10] repeatedly. After they guess a

So. I have done a similar thing for a while now. I call it adversarial selection. I ask a participant(p) to guess a number [1,10] repeatedly. After they guess a number, I immediately tell them my guess of their selected number. Immediately after I guess they are instructed to make a new guess and tap the table indicating they have picked a number. The point is to go through these generations very fast. Often what I'll observe is they try to mimic a random distribution by selecting a number far away from their last selection, but sometimes they somehow catch on and start saying things like the same number (rare) or a number close to it. This gets interesting because they usually start cycling between picking a number far away and close, but they do so with a particular pattern. I'm able to guess their numbers well beyond a random distribution, and it all comes down the the idea that they are trying to make a random number or trick me, which produces a blueprint of behavior.

sillysaurus3 10y ago
Are you sure the 10% chance isn't standing out more in your memory? It would be interesting to measure this over hundreds of guesses. It seems likely that the probability of guessing correctly would be around 1/9, since people rarely pick the same number, but is a sustained 1/8 or better really possible?
jameshart 10y ago
"I ask a participant(p)" Good forward planning to allocate a variable to hold a reference to the participant in case you need to refer to them later in the story, though in this case it turned out not to be needed. I need to start doing this in anecdotes. "So I was chatting with a colleague (C), and he mentioned..."
- joemi 10y ago
  To be fair, it's kind of the same thing as just using someone's name: "So I was chatting with my colleague Chris, and he mentioned..."
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  I was responding to a Hacker News comment (H), and it said...

sillysaurus3 10y ago

Are you sure the 10% chance isn't standing out more in your memory? It would be interesting to measure this over hundreds of guesses. It seems likely that the probability of guessing correctly would be around 1/9, since people rarely pick the same number, but is a sustained 1/8 or better really possible?

jameshart 10y ago

"I ask a participant(p)" Good forward planning to allocate a variable to hold a reference to the participant in case you need to refer to them later in the story, though in this case it turned out not to be needed. I need to start doing this in anecdotes. "So I was chatting with a colleague (C), and he mentioned..."

joemi 10y ago
To be fair, it's kind of the same thing as just using someone's name: "So I was chatting with my colleague Chris, and he mentioned..."
JoshTriplett 10y ago
I was responding to a Hacker News comment (H), and it said...