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> The easy thing to do is to ask someone “Hey, pick a random number from 1 to 10!”. The person replies “7!”. Seven factorial is way bigger than 10. Just kiddin
by codetrotter 7y ago
> The easy thing to do is to ask someone “Hey, pick a random number from 1 to 10!”. The person replies “7!”.
Seven factorial is way bigger than 10. Just kidding, sorry.
But what I was actually going to say was, when I read the title of the post, before clicking through, I decided to think of a number myself and I chose the number seven. So it was fun to see that same number in the article.
10% chance in theory and in reality it’s about 25% likely for someone to pick the specific number I did. If only the odds in the lottery were this good.
Why, by the way, is it that seven is so popular?
- sophiebits 7y agoIt's large and prime, so it feels less "round".
- hackerbabz 7y agoI think 7s feel more random because they are so uncommon in normal life. We want to avoid multiplying or dividing by 7 whenever possible. Imagine if "a dozen" were 7 instead of 12.
- earenndil 7y agoWe see 7 all the time, though, in a week.
- iambateman 7y agoI was going to pick seven as well. Personal guess for why it’s a favorite... 1. I want to signal that I’m creative. If you say “random, between 1-10” picking 5 feels amateur. 2. You said “between 1-10”, which is inclusive of 1 and 10, but you positioned me to not choose the poles with the word “between.” 3. It feels random to iterate through options and settle on one. I iterate by counting up. Since 5 is out, that leaves 6,7,8,9 in my big pile’o’random. From there, for whatever reason 7 tends to stand out. Crazy how predictable we are.
- kovrik 7y agoMy guess: it is all about culture. I guess asian people are more likely to choose 8 (lucky number) and avoid 4 (unlucky number).
- cheerlessbog 7y agoThink of a vegetable. I predict you think of a carrot.
- dmurray 7y agoThink of a number between 1 and 10. Multiply it by 9. Add the digits of that number. Subtract 5. Convert it to a letter using A = 1, B = 2, ...). Think of a country beginning with that letter. Take the second letter of the country. Think of an animal beginning with the new letter. I predict you thought of (rot13) Ryrcunag. Not exactly the same trick, and not guaranteed to work, but this one impressed me at a young age.
- cheerlessbog 7y agoIt works because there are remarkably few country names starting with D that don't start with DE. And everyone picks the same E. Now try asking for an animal whose name starts with U.
- DSMan195276 7y agoI think most people (or at least those who choose 7, which I definitely used to do) associate 'randomness' with 'uniqueness', and since lots people would consider 7 to be the most 'unique' number between 1 and 10 (When considering things such as divisors and how often they are used), they pick that number as it feels the most 'random'.
- jstimpfle 7y agoMy impression is that 37 is a similar outlier if you ask for random numbers from 1-100.
- TheAceOfHearts 7y agoThis past week I was reading Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman which has the same interaction: > "Now me," said Mr. Vandemar. "What number am I thinking of?" > "I beg your pardon?" > "What number am I thinking of?" repeated Mr. Vandemar. "It's between one and a lot," he added, helpfully. > "Seven," said the marquis. Mr. Vandemar nodded, impressed. When I encountered the question the first number that popped into my head was also seven. This was immediately followed by the thought that if I were the one picking a number I should explicitly avoid seven. Does this question and answer pair give anyone else a strong feeling of déjà vu? I think this interaction is a meme [0]. It's also interesting that most people will limit their choice to a (whole number | positive integer). The best choice is probably an irrational number like the square root of two (√2) or pi (π). Although those are still relatively predictable since most people would probably make their selection from the small set of well-known irrational numbers, so you should go one step further and add to or multiply the value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
- gizmo686 7y agoYour best choice is probably to stick with rationals, and just list off an arbitrary number of digits to the right of the decimal.
- eridius 7y agoAIUI 3 is the most common if you ask someone to pick between 1 and 5. I was actually surprised to see 3 wasn't the second-most-common for a number from 1 to 10.
- another-dave 7y agoFrom the Reddit comments someone wrote: "Can't have the evens, they aren't random. 1 and 9 are too close to the outside. 5 isn't random, it's right in the middle! 3 is too low. Leaving 7" It does feel like the type of biased logic that would run through your mind in the moment — interesting to think, if we have such 'fallacies' on simple stuff, what level of blindspots do we have on more complex split-second decisions.
- aeternus 7y agoQuite a few, anchoring is pretty interesting and can often be completely subconscious.
- pvinis 7y agoHaha wow! Ok so I thought of the same. Let me think of a number before clicking. Then I thought let me try something fancier, I know I would go around 6-8 so let’s switch it up. Let’s put the scale like 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 in my mind. Ok now let’s pick from a weird place, like the first half, say the middle of it. What’s that number. Oh it’s 7. I arrived to the same number while trying not to. Different kind of “randomness” I guess. Humans are weird! :p
- user17843 7y agowoah, I thought of seven too, before reading the article or the comments.
- dwild 7y agoI tried that once with 2 friends, I asked them to think of a number between 1 and 10 and I then asked if it was 7 and they both were amazed :).