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Why have contestants on “The Price is Right” become so much worse at guessing?
- dr-detroit 7y agoFans were memorizing prices and it got out of hand so they randomize it now.
- duxup 7y agoI gotta admit. I was / am always amazed that they are as accurate as they are. Like outside of a couple products I probabbly can't tell you what most groceries or consumer products cost. There's just so many to keep track of, and that's saying something as I shop / cook a great deal. I seriously would dramatically under or overbid on a can of soup.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago(Wasn't able to read the article through the paywall) Does Price is Right use MSRP or what? Because I'll usually just look at my options and choose my lowest one - I have no idea what I should be paying for something.
- ljcn 7y ago> Wasn't able to read the article through the paywall Try turning off javascript.
- steviedotboston 7y agohttps://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/03/05/what-one-game-show-reveals-about-the-american-economy https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/united-state...
- nomadluap 7y agoFor most paywall sites like this, you can also get the full content by being quick on the 'escape' key after reloading. If you can interrupt it after the static article content loads but before most of the javascript loads then the bottom paragraphs won't get chopped off.
- m_eiman 7y agoI do the same thing. The shopping list says "milk", I look at the options on the shelf and select a suitable one. Price is likely a parameter, but since it's just a local decision I've more or less forgotten the actual numbers a minute later. I suppose I would notice if the price was suddenly $5 for something that usually costs $1, but for many items I'm not even sure I would.
- fakedang 7y agouMatrix is your friend
- frostburg 7y agoThis is true, but a lot of people here would be great at "the FLOPS are right" or "the read latency is right" (incredibly boring show), while most also determined either consciously or not that recalling the price of consumer products wasn't that worthwhile.
- mdszy 7y ago"How much could a banana cost, Michael? Ten dollars?"
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 7y agoGoing with their mentioned larger number of products but also throw out that manufacturers are good at creating similar products that have minor differences to benefit certain large retailers; some of which could use this to avoid price matching. throw in confusion between MSRP and actual pricing and not knowing which price they use would add to the confusion
- buu700 7y agoTechnology may play a role. Reaching for a smartphone is easier than recalling a fact from memory. Who remembers phone numbers anymore? I wouldn't guess that memory is the issue so much as less exposure to this type of information in the first place. We no longer aimlessly browse stores checking everything out; now we just search for specific items, buy them, and move on. I can probably recall the prices of things I've actually purchased about as well as past generations, but anything beyond that is basically a wild guess. As someone who's been keto for just about my entire adult life, the humor of "I mean it's one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?"[1] was almost lost on me. 1: https://youtu.be/Nl_Qyk9DSUw https://youtu.be/Nl_Qyk9DSUw
- tyfon 7y ago> Who remembers phone numbers anymore? I do.. Most of those I remember are from the 80s and 90s though :D But I do remember the phone number of my closest family still. I also remember my bank account numbers which is something many find strange!
- WalterBright 7y ago> Most of those I remember are from the 80s and 90s though :D So do I. Weird. The thing is, I have trouble remembering my own cell number, because I never dial it.
- geodel 7y agoI remember speed of light (299792458 m/s) but no birthdays or anniversaries of family or friends. No need to ask why I suck at relationships.
- david422 7y agoYo- put them on your calendar repeating yearly! That way you never have to remember and you also never forget.
- listenallyall 7y ago
- m3kw9 7y agoMaybe they are less piece conscious than before. There seem to be less coupon cutting with data analytics applying constant sales to attract buyers. Prices are skewed this way.
- droidist2 7y agoThat's true, also food makes up a lower portion of people's expenses these days, with housing taking a higher amount.
- jdlyga 7y agoFor me, the prices can vary widely depending on what store you shop at. A can of Classico spaghetti sauce at my local store is $3.50. But the same can, volume, and flavor on Amazon is $1.99.
- zaroth 7y agoYes but on Amazon you are buying “Classico” versus at the store you are buying Classico.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoThat's assuming you actually get a legit can of spaghetti sauce, and not a poisonous counterfeit. Seriously, don't trust Amazon with stuff you ingest. Not worth the danger.
- TetOn 7y agoI'd say it's more indicative of the randomness of contestant inclusion than anything else. Are the rates of "regular watcher" contestants decreasing? Have the producers changed the type of contestant they decide to include? To be truly effective at these games, you needed to be watching what the accepted show price of items were...you never could assume your local store price or dealership price.
- swarnie_ 7y agoMaybe technology is to blame but in a different way. Its well accepted now that a person will be offered two different prices for a product or service depending on a wide number of factors. Included but not limited to: New/repeat customer, country of connection, device used to connect, previous purchasing or even searching habits. You can test this in the UK by searching for a holiday. Do it once on an android phone using your normal account and then do it again via a macbook as a guest of the site.
- sparcpile 7y agoThe article was behind a paywall, but in the past few years, the show has been getting away from staple goods to make it more difficult for contestants to win. The Perfect Bid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdFKZtZop7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdFKZtZop7A) went over this in more detail after a player and long time watcher (Ted Slauson) managed to win both showcases. For years, the show had used a set of household goods that had a consistent price. Ted memorized all of the prices and won both showcases at the end. The producer freaked out over the incident and started to use more items and ones that add-ons that made guessing the price more difficult. They did that because they didn't want their winnings budget blown out. In recent years, they have been using more generic items like 'free utilities for a year' to make it more random.
- twodave 7y agoI shop for my family's groceries every week, and I couldn't tell you the price of 3/4 of what I buy. I just know what a usual weekly total looks like. If there's significant change I can usually tie it to one or two items that were special that week (or that great sale that I chose to bulk up on). I tend to just put things into buckets of $1-20, $20-100, $100-250, etc. Most things at the grocery store are in that first bucket, so while I'll grab an alternate if there's a sale on, the only prices I really pay attention to are steak/large cuts of meat.
- StavrosK 7y agoConversely, I shop on AliExpress, and I've become very good at telling you the price of any gadget.
- moooo99 7y agoAbsolutely. Whenever I see ads on social media for yet another dropshipping store I can instantly guess how much they are paying for the product when they order it from China.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoIt's actually a rough indication of your wealth; there was an article the other day that categorized people by wealth based on what purchases they don't really have to think about (can't find it in quick order). Not having to nitpick about common groceries puts you comfortably in the middle class; the next step would be the ability to just go on vacation several times a year without really worrying about it. Then it's stuff like cars and big purchases like that, then houses, then idk, yachts? Elections? Countries?
- aganders3 7y agoStewart Butterfield discussed this when he was on "How I Built This" https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633164558/slack-flickr-stewart-butterfield https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633164558/slack-flickr-stewar...
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- alecco 7y agoFor me, The Economist is the prime example of the Murray Gell-Mann amnesia effect. They are so off on topics I happen to know about. And yet I feel like I can trust them with whatever wacky eye-catching theory they conjure.
- viburnum 7y agoIt really is. I read it cover to cover for ten years before I caught on (I’m a slow learner). This podcast episode is about the history of The Economist. It’s really interesting: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-98-the-refined-sociopathy-of-the-economist https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-98-the-refined-so...
- jerf 7y agoCan't get through the paywall, but some of it is that the Price is Right has deliberately made it harder, which I think is something you can't ignore: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-perfect-bid-0810/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-p... : "Terry Kniess studied prices. He saw that virtually every prize on The Price Is Right, from a pack of gum to the flashiest car, repeated. He and Linda memorized their values the way Terry had learned to count cards. When they felt they were ready, they made their way to California.... "Actual retail price, $23,743," Carey said. "You got it right on the nose. You win both Showcases."" "The producers no longer rely on Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup; now they have different soups. They have different everything. They've built more luck into the games, dumb luck, and they've started doing sneaky things like changing the options on the cars — adding floor mats, taking away the stereo system — to mess with the prices. And they've started adding more luxury items, like Burberry coats, the sorts of things for which ordinary people who have lived their ordinary lives would never have clipped a coupon." You can study for the Price is Right right now: https://quizlet.com/218097429/the-price-is-right-study-guide-flash-cards/ https://quizlet.com/218097429/the-price-is-right-study-guide... Though I don't vouch for how accurate that's going to be after the changes. Based on what I could read of the article, and what other people are saying in response, I suspect the article is basically ruined by the fact that it was deliberately made harder. Of course after it was deliberately made harder, people did worse. There's not a lot of conclusions to be drawn from that data point, even trendy ones like "addiction to cell phones", which may ruin 90% of the people's memories but another fraction may be using their cell phones to run SRS programs to memorize everything. (You can waste a lot of time on cell phones, sure, but they can be powerfully turned to the light side if you take a bit of time to figure out how.)
- wnissen 7y agoI think you have the reason exactly right. The producers got lazy on the prices and only recently have gone back to more difficult pricing.
- lonelappde 7y agoIn addition to other good comments here, "prices" don't exist as inherent attributes anymore. Everything is variably priced and has multiple discounts applied, so no one knows the meaningless "retail price" of what they buy. They just see what the offer is on the day they shop. TPIR is a very US show. In most of the world, especially going back to when the show began, the idea of a product having "a" price is laughably absurd. Everything is haggled over.
- b0rsuk 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly Confusopoly (aka Dilbert's confusopoly) is confusing marketing designed to prevent the buyer making informed decisions. (...) The term has been adopted by economists. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, championing meaningful regulation for the financial industry, used the term confusopoly to refer to large financial institutions (Cordray 2014, 4'04"-4'26") : "There's actually an economic term for this; it's called "Confusopoly." If [the sellers] can confuse the consumer enough then the consumers won't necessary know what choice they're making and they can be talked into just about anything." — Richard Cordray, 2014/01/08
- strbean 7y agoI love this concept. This perfectly describes the state of pretty much all consumer markets today, and one of the biggest pitfalls of free-market capitalism. Also, it feeds in to my always-shouted-down argument that advertising/marketing is generally a counter-productive economic broken window (not counter-productive for a given business, but counter-productive as a whole).
- b0rsuk 7y agoI wish I could PM this to you because it's third time I post the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20577142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20577142 Advertising is cancer on society. Very thoughtful points.
- strbean 7y agoAdded to my reading list, thanks!
- blaser-waffle 7y agoInformation Asymmetry is the more generic term for this situation. One person has the info, and the other doesn't -- and can benefit from keeping it that way, e.g. insider stock trading, estate sales, even garage sales where you know what their old junk is really worth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry
- ses1984 7y agoThe prices of things fluctuate so much. The price of the same product in different stores or the same product in the same store on different days can vary wildly. How many things these days have fixed prices? Iphones? Teslas? Mail order mattresses?
- dang 7y agoRelated from 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21623599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21623599 and from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15986984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15986984