13 ms·
Pick a number from 1 to 10
- steipete 16y agoThere are faster ways to provide data for /dev/random...
- wladimir 16y agoHe wants a "human" random distribution, not an uniform one. To see what numbers are picked most of the time.
- leif 16y agoIt also seems he wants to see how different number-picking interfaces change that distribution. Try refreshing.
- joezydeco 16y agoThe source shows he's also timing the pick, which I think is probably the more important dependent variable here. Doesn't matter what number you chose - it's how long it took you to find it, click it, and hit submit.
- alecperkins 16y agoIndeed. The goal there is to see if people think about the choice, then second guess it before actually submitting. Edit: Quickly skimming through the database, it also reveals "tab" loaders who open up a bunch of tabs and let them sit. (It couldn't possibly have taken someone 300s to make a decision!) Not the goal, and it does skew the data, but still interesting.
- mmavnn 16y agoMine will be slow due to trying to select a value on a slider with a well used G1 phone...
- recoiledsnake 16y agoDon't use the data for timing purposes, that's more than, say 40 seconds?
- joezydeco 16y agoHow about not starting the timer until you see mouse activity on the page?
- KingOfB 16y agoI hope he gathers data from different social groups. Would be interesting to prove that techie-types have a numerical bias different from marketing types.
- wladimir 16y agoPicks by country (based on IP geolocation) would also be interesting to see.
- alecperkins 16y agoJust added this metric. Wish I had included it earlier, but hopefully there will be enough votes to get something interesting out of that.
- tejaswiy 16y agoActually, I've heard a lot of people pick 2 or 7. Can you confirm if this is true?
- ceejayoz 16y agoI'd imagine that sort of data is what they're looking for.
- rednum 16y agoI remember reading an article on this about year ago on HN. I think that the conclusion seemed to be that human prefer odd and prime numbers (at least in range 1 - 20).
- frooxie 16y agoYes, they seem more "random" to people.
- citricsquid 16y agoI was just thinking it'll be 7. My own theory is most people don't want to be in the middle, so they go for the middle of the upper half. That's what I did anyway.
- joejohnson 16y agoIt might be biasing it's results by having it set to one by default...
- alecperkins 16y agoThe other methods don't have a default. Sliders don't really present a good way of doing a "non-choice" default. I decided to leave it fixed at 1 to start to see if that particular method skews because of the default. (Not exactly precise and thorough, unfortunately. There could be more metrics, like starting position, but I wanted to keep it simple so I could get it up and running quickly.)
- jedberg 16y agoYour slider could have a * at each end and one in the middle, and have it start randomly on one of the 3 stars, but make them unselectable.
- alecperkins 16y agoGood idea! The next iteration will try this.
- egypturnash 16y agoDefault to a random choice, keep track of both that and the ultimate choice is. Does the start position bias the selection? You'll find out!
- rgbrgb 16y agoExcellent. Now give us the data!
- samuel1604 16y agoIt's all about the position of the mouse I would believe.
- Urgo 16y agoThat's what I was thinking too. My choice was influenced at least slightly by where my mouse was at picking time. Would have been better to have a text entry field I think.
- terhechte 16y agoI also chose 7. Human Random Distribution is probably not very random. I hope that he'll release the data.
- mikeryan 16y agoI was leaning towards 7 then thought "everyone chooses 7" and went with 9.
- kissickas 16y agoI wish this data could be analyzed- I was debating between three, five, and seven, and chose nine just to throw off Benford's Law. I really think it is the first time I have ever chosen nine.
- WiseWeasel 16y agoDamn you! 9 is mine! : P I figured 9 had to be the least picked, but I'm starting to think I should have gone with 6...
- eneveu 16y agoThere is actually a "mind trick" where you make someone choose a number between 1 and 4, guess it is 3, then make them choose a number between 1 and 10, and guess it is 7. It works, because there is a statistical bias toward these numbers, but the way you do the trick is also important (the way you gesture with your hands primes the person to answer with these numbers). I've always loved such mind tricks, and I have done this one quite a few times. Before discovering HN, I used to go out a lot, and, when talking to cute girls, I've done this "trick" many times for giggles. Some girls really believed I was a psychic when I got it right :) Funnily enough, knowing about this trick and the "statistical preference" for the number 7 made me choose 7 in this experiment, without thinking twice about it. I realized this afterward...
- pizza 16y agoI chose 7 because I knew that no one else would, so I decided to re/un-skew the results :)
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- ot 16y agoAre you trying to estimate the bias depending on the type of selector used (slider, input, options, ...)? Very interesting concept :) EDIT, forgot to add: if this is the case, have you thought of storing the type of selector in a cookie, so that refreshing the page gives always the same type?
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- alecperkins 16y agoYeah, I considered a more involved way of choosing the interfaces to present — the server attempts to even out the distribution of interfaces, use cookies to limit, etc — but I also just really wanted to get this made in a couple hours. The current implementation is about as simple as it gets.
- hammock 16y agoIs this an actual app or is it just a trojan horse designed to collect our data?!
- michaelcampbell 16y agoAre not trojan horses also "actual" apps?
- alecperkins 16y agoYes? What do you mean by app? It's an app whose entire purpose is to collect data. I wouldn't think of it as a Trojan horse, since it doesn't pretend to be anything else. I guess it's Trojan in that it was made in Troy, NY.
- hammock 16y agoI guess no one gets the "Color" joke here...
- alecperkins 16y agoOh hahaha nicely done. Unfortunately subtlety and the Web don't mix too well.
- Vivtek 16y agoI swiped the mouse quickly, ended up at 5, and managed to resist the temptation to change it to something "more random". How many people leave it at 1? This is kinda neat. Also, it was nice of science to thank me.
- haentz 16y agoActually you were supposed to _choose_ a number and not generate a random-ish one…
- alecperkins 16y agoWere you asked to "Pick a number…" or "Pick a random number…"? One of the metrics is the phrasing of the question.
- Vivtek 16y agoI think it said "pick a random number", but honestly, I didn't read it as closely as I'd read the headline here. So I don't know.
- alecperkins 16y agoPick a number, then read, please. The goal at first was to just see what numbers people gravitate toward. I've heard lots of conjecture about how people pick 7 or 3 or 4 more than others, and for a variety of reasons, but had a hard time finding actual demonstration of this. Then, while implementing a choosing system, the problem became: how do you present the information so as not to bias it? This is why there are four different ways of picking. There are also a couple other metrics being measured, including a difference in phrasing (Pick a number… vs Pick a random number…) which may be interesting. Apologies for any bugs or general wonkiness. The whole thing was a ~2 hour impulse project. PS: The data will absolutely be shared! Just need time to do a breakdown of all the different permutations.
- lisper 16y agoI presume this is your site? Your design has a serious flaw: the number "1" is "selected" when you first view the page, which biases the results. You apparently tried to "fix" this by forcing the user to move the slider before the choice would be accepted, but that also biases the results. The only way to really make it unbiased is with a text box. The next best thing would have been ten buttons in a row (but then you would have had to make sure that they didn't go off the right side of the screen).
- alecperkins 16y agoRefresh the page, repeatedly if necessary. ;)
- lisper 16y agoOh, I see. Never mind :-)
- kylec 16y agoI'd actually be interested in how different ways of presenting the choice affect the number chosen. It would be interesting of the author ran an A/B test with different methods of selection (text box, row of buttons 1-10, row of buttons in random order, slider, etc) to see what the differences would be.
- solipsist 16y agoAfter you've entered your unbiased data, make sure to refresh the page and see what else you could have been confronted with. You'll notice the different variables in the experiment - just make sure to do this after in order for it to not influence your decision.
- tommi 16y agoI chose 7 with slider preset at 1. Didn't want to leave it at 1 and throwing the slider "left" it there. Referrer might be interesting information. Do geeks behave differently etc.
- Bolyuba 16y agoDid it twice before reading comments. 7 and than 3. Have no idea why. My wife just picked 7... Scary
- AbyCodes 16y agoWithout something like facebook or twitter login, the system will be abused. There is no stopping someone who just reloads ( or even make an automated script heh ) and keeps on choosing, resulting in flawed data. Just saying.
- alecperkins 16y agoTotally agreed. I'm relying on people not caring enough to abuse it — a bit risky, I know. I just wanted something simple that wouldn't require people to jump through hoops just to vote. Also, the IPs are now one of the metrics, for regional breakdown, so that could be used to spot obvious anomalies.
- necro 16y agoBased on that interface I would predict... middle number: for the graphical choices as it's common/easier to get a valid first click in the middle of the slider. high number: for the key entry as if most people are right handed it's easier to get to the high numbers instead of going across the keyboard. all that is predicated on the fact that people are lazy instead of random when using this.
- vidyesh 16y agoOn Refreshing, it changes the interface, every time you get a different input method. I guess its that way so as to avoid being biased over any number by default.
- oniTony 16y agoI was going to pick 4, but then realized that 4 has been my default "random" number, ever since http://xkcd.com/221/ http://xkcd.com/221/
- joelhaasnoot 16y agoDefinitely must have been Sony's inspiration. Geohot only proved they're XKCD fans.
- scotty79 16y agoAwww. I was going to pick seven but I thought it's too meaningfull so I changed it to first meningless number that came to my mind. Namely 4.
- davidmathers 16y agoAlso Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/00000/2000/300/2318/2318.strip.gif http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/...
- Natsu 16y agoI was going to pick 7.1 until I found out that he was prepared for pedantry and restricted the set to natural numbers.
- insight 16y agoPls add : 42
- teuobk 16y agoAn interesting extension of this could be to add a poll here on HN asking, "Which number did you pick?" and then comparing the poll results to the actual results.
- davidjagoe 16y agoBrilliant idea, but haven't you built in bias by unblinding the experiment? I followed the link, got one implementation and keyed in '5'. Then I read your write-up and realised that there are more implementations, reloaded the page and thought deeply about the number I would/should choose on the slider.
- protomyth 16y agoI would imagine that if you did this survey in a crowd of sports fans, you would get a different distribution based on town or player followed. Plus, if I remember right 7 and 4 and not terribly lucky numbers in China.
- driverdan 16y agoI was already aware that most people choose 7 in this situation so I selected my favorite number 8.
- DeusExMachina 16y agoI was not aware of that and I actually chose 7, which is also my favorite number.
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- BasDirks 16y agoI picked 8 because I could not find a reason for picking 8.
- zyfo 16y agoReminds me of Benford's Law [1], which stipulates that in many lists of numbers from real-world data, the leading digit is 1 30% of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency (logarithmically). This has been used to detect made-up numbers in accounting which later turned out to be fraudulent behaviour. 1: http://www.rexswain.com/benford.html http://www.rexswain.com/benford.html
- mailarchis 16y agoThere is an interesting observation. Try selecting a random number multiple times with page refresh. The ui keeps changing.
- lucasjung 16y agoI picked 6 because it was closest to my cursor when the row of numbers popped up.
- J3L2404 16y agoOf the different interfaces, the prompt in the circle looked the best, although the mysterious black circle was OK.
- reidab 16y agoI'm curious to know if the typing prompt scores fewer 10's because of increased typing effort and if the hover-to-reveal circle gets more centrally-located numbers due to Fitt's law
- clvv 16y agoInteresting project. I'm looking forward to see the results. This reminds me some of the mental algorithms I was thinking about: How do you generate a random number without electronic devices? How do you generate a random permutation without electronic devices? How do you generate a hash without electronic devices? How do you do the above most efficiently? How about without any pen, pencil or paper? It will be cool if you can master mental cryptography.
- alkavan 16y agojust picked 6, i dunno why, was high.
- d2zo 16y agoHmm, might be interesting to see the results of numbers presented in a ring, equidistant from the cursor...
- alanfalcon 16y agoAs long as you rotate the starting positions of the numbers on the ring and track both the chosen number and the cardinal position of their chosen number on their board. Maybe people are biased to numbers falling at the "three o'clock" position, that would be interesting to find out.
- Tichy 16y agoCan't wait to hear how many people picked 10 (as I did). If it hadn't been for science, I would probably have picked 7 like everybody else. Once I thought it would be good to play the numbers "1 2 3 4 5 6" in the lottery because they are as likely as other numbers, and I thought people would not pick them. Turns out lots of people play "1 2 3 4 5 6".
- alanfalcon 16y agoIn fact the only advantage you can have in the lottery is of decreasing the chances of hitting a winning number that was also chosen by someone else and thus having to split the Jackpot. Many people let the computer choose, which helps limit duplicates, but if you want to choose numbers then be sure to select numbers over 31. Many people select important dates and so don't have any "lucky numbers" over 31. That said, if you really want to increase your return for playing the lottery, sticking your money in a cookie jar is a far better investment, provided you already ate all the cookies in the jar.
- Tichy 16y agoI know - haven't played in ages, either, but sometimes just for fun it seems OK. In that case it should be considered more of an entertainment than an investment. As for numbers above 31 - of course it only works as long as not many people realize they should pick numbers above 31. In the long run I suppose random numbers are the best bet.
- bauchidgw 16y agopleas deploy http://code.google.com/p/jquery-ui-for-ipad-and-iphone/ http://code.google.com/p/jquery-ui-for-ipad-and-iphone/ or something likt that to make the number by bar-thingie working in the ipad
- jablan 16y agoSorry, science wants you break some sweat and move to a proper computer. :P
- frooxie 16y agoI picked 7, because that's what I expected other people to gravitate to, and I wanted to see if you had some fun response if I picked the most common alternative. :P
- nikcub 16y agoThought of submitting this to mechanical turk in order to get a lot of data?
- alecperkins 16y agoHow about Reddit? Total votes is 160k+. Yikes!
- ruby_on_rails 16y agoIts a cool idea but I would recommend A/B testing different GUI for picking numbers for removing some of the possible biases. I personally picked 7, most likely because the human eye moves from top left to bottom right so I scanned what the choices were then picked the number near where my eye last looked. Also, I would love to see a heat map/click map of that page.
- CallMeV 16y agoI accidentally chose my number before I could do more than deliberate on whether to pick that number or go for another one.
- eli 16y agoYou shouldn't have it start on "1" -- you should make people have to slide it.
- Andrenid 16y agoI picked 6 purely because it's in the middle of my keyboard. I don't think "type a random number" is the same as "think of or say a random number"...
- nose 16y agoI'd like to see a heatmap for the website. I think you can do it with google analytics.
- alecperkins 16y agoI posted a graph with the basic distribution on the results page (just hardcoded for the moment): http://nfrom1to10.appspot.com/results/ http://nfrom1to10.appspot.com/results/ A more in depth breakdown is coming. The number of responses has been far, far beyond what I expected — several orders of magnitude more. Once I get together a good way to efficiently track and display the graphs, I'll make them live.
- mcorrientes 16y agoEven if people have to pick a number from 1 to 20, 7 would be the second most chosen one. http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/is_17_the_most_random_number.php http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/is_17_the_mos...
- TheSOB88 16y agoI did not understand what to do. I thought it was going to try to guess it. I didn't understand that the 1 was the answer I was giving. Sadly.
- WingForward 16y agoWhat is the point of the asterisk at the end of the request? Oh, and something about the page with the circle on it prevents my browser from reloading.
- kirpekar 16y agoWhat is the point of this numerical experiment? (I"m serious)
- niketdesai 16y agoI am interested in finding out how many people decided not to choose a number at all, and if that fact could help mitigate the experiment's inherent bias. As for people making multiple entries into the experiment, a simple IP filter could help reduce overall error. I think it would be neat to offer an option to not choose a number, but rather a number to help offset selector's bias (in participating in the number choosing experiment knowingly). It's similar to the multiple choosing UIs. Nonetheless, I can only appreciate simple things like this that lead to a spirited and educated read. Cheers and can't wait to see "final" results and accompanying analysis.
- robryan 16y agoI'd imagine 7 would be less popular or people that have previously heard of a bias towards 7, would be hard to have a test group though that has never heard anything at all about a bias. It's still the highest so far in this experiment though.
- Zolomon 16y agoI had a favourite number, and I picked it. It was 4.
- ilitirit 16y agoHere's another test: Ask the user to pick a number from 1 to 10 but randomize the order of the numbers each time.
- coprolog 16y agoyesterday i was improving my excel skills about statistics, instead of use the random funcion i thought to ask a number from 1 to 10 to some friend and see the histogram. just after some question i was surprised about the results and so i asked more people. up to now i asked 24 people(46 number in total,the first 2 was just one question), i also asked a second number after recived the first. my result are: that 7 win with 31% of answer followed by 5 with 17% the last are 10 (zero answer), 1 with 1 answer and 2 and 6 with 2 answer each. you have to note that 83% say a odd number as a first one.noone told me a number that wasnt integer. whats going on? the majority of people was italian, some spanish and some german.Guido
- roryokane 16y agoUpon being shown a circle and asked to pick a random number, I thought for a bit and realized that no matter what I picked I wouldn't believe I had chosen it randomly. Then I wrote a one-line script to generate a random number from 1 to 10 and I put its output as my answer. Perhaps this defeated the purpose of the site, but I find it so hard to choose when I know my response is being measured.