7 ms·
Results for: Pick a number from 1 to 10
- shib71 16y agoThere was something about "for SCIENCE!" that was irresistible.
- alecperkins 16y agoThat bit of "flair" was added almost on a whim. I'm glad I did add it. I think that helped the experiment get the attention it did, especially when it got onto Reddit. It's funny how a simple factor can (probably) have such a big impact. Also, the unintentional "mystery" of not including any information about the who or why on the site itself may have helped. I noticed many comments on HN and Reddit that speculated about each, which no doubt increased the activity profile. A little bit of personality goes a long way.
- kipwork 16y agoI think that the reason that 7 is so high is because it is commonly believed that 3 will is the first one you think of. As a result people choose to pick something higher, hence 4 and 7 being the top two.
- lucasbmccoy 16y agoI didn't think that much. I just chose 7 because I wanted to choose I high number, but anything higher then 7 would have been to high.
- archangel_one 16y agoI thought it was commonly believed that 7 is the most often picked - I've seen a "magic" trick based around that before. Sort of looks to me like people avoid the extremes and also 5 (possibly because it's "right in the middle" and so perceived as "less random"?).
- metachris 16y agoI was talking with a friend when I visited the website, and just completely unconsciously entered any number. It was 7. After submitting I wondered why I did that without even thinking about it.
- lubos 16y agomy favorite number is 4 but I entered 7 because I wanted something higher and this was the highest prime number within that range :)
- travisglines 16y agoIt seems like publicizing some preliminary results of the study before the study is complete would put the legitimacy of the final results very much so at risk. constructive criticism ... for science
- impendia 16y agoYes, but so would (presumably extreme) sample bias.
- alecperkins 16y agoAfter 80k votes, it seemed prudent to give those asking "so what?" a response.
- travisglines 16y agoIf (as I'm sure you do) you have the times along with the votes it would be cool to see if there was actually a bias when comparing the before response and after response datasets.
- spravin 16y agoThe positioning of the dropdown clearly has a lot of influence on the results. People are horrible random number generators! In this case, people are unlikely to choose the ends (1/9) or the center (5) leading to a bimodal distribution with two modes at 4 and 7.
- kmiyer 16y agoNote however that different types of input systems were used. Refreshes show the following different types: * A slider that need to be dragged to choose a value. * A list of numbers shown with highlighting on hover. * An input cursor that on hover changes to a list of numbers (within a curved border this time). * A text field (enclosed in a circular border), allowing manual input. I'm quite interested in how results varied depending upon input type (possibly more interesting than seeing how they vary by referrer).
- nixy 16y agoWell, why don't you have a look? :) http://nfrom1to10.appspot.com/results/ http://nfrom1to10.appspot.com/results/
- risotto 16y agoIn thinking back, that's exactly why I picked 4. I just clicked whatever was closest because I wasn't even thinking about the exercise.
- citricsquid 16y agoThe number picker was random, some people got a drop down, some got a list of numbers, some got a slider etc etc etc
- bradly 16y agoWas this only posted to HN? If it was posted on other sites it would neat to check the numbers against refers to see if HN is better at picking random numbers than, say, Reddit.
- apinter 16y agoI solved this problem by using software. Using your current brain state is a terrible seed for randomness.
- djahng 16y agoHow do you be "better at picking random numbers"?
- oniTony 16y agoEven distribution, instead of bell-curves around popular/bias numbers.
- djahng 16y agoThe site asks you to pick a random number, not mentioning anything about trying to achieve a specific distribution. EDIT: Downvotes and no comments, nice. You guys seem to be misunderstanding something. If asked to picked any number ("random") between 1 and 10, to suggest that the outcome is "wrong" because the distribution isn't uniform doesn't make any sense at all. It would be a completely different experiment if we were asked to pick a number between 1 and 10 such that the outcome after x number of independent trials has a uniform (or gaussian/exponential/etc) distribution. This seems to be what some people are assuming.
- Raphael 16y agoThe larger the sample, the more likely a truly random input approaches a uniform distribution. Yes, a coin flip could come up heads 10000 times in a row, but it just doesn't happen.
- 16y ago
- vidyesh 16y agoSeems like people are so number centric and go for the universal lucky number. Not sure why. How did this help? Were you able to do any behavior analysis based on this small experiment? I would suggest, go on a weekly result and keep tabs on result variation. Try posting it on various/diverse communities. This might help to understand alot about visitor behavior on various websites as you can track referring websites too. If possible graph the picks depending upon the referring websites. Or even a graph based on region, tracking via IP should be easy. For those who missed the Parent post, check here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375149 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375149
- orijing 16y agoThe problem is that it didn't ask us to choose the numbers uniformly. Perhaps I picked from a Gaussian distribution with mean 5 and a strict cut-off at 1 and 10. I don't think anything can be concluded unless it asked for "choose uniformly at random among the 10 numbers," if we want results robust against question biasing.
- Eliezer 16y ago"Choose randomly" is generally understood to mean "choose randomly from a probability distribution containing as much entropy as possible given the problem." I mean, I could choose from the probability distribution {0.001, 0.001, 0.998} but it's commonly understood that this isn't what's meant by the word "random". PS: I chose 2. Eat that, seveners!
- adleberg 16y agoIs it wise to publish updated results while the data is still being gathered? Random selection should be blind and independent and its quite possible people may change their vote to favor an 'unpopular' number or vice versa.
- burke 16y agoYou didn't count my 11 :(
- AndyKelley 16y agoDid you actually use firebug and submit an 11 to the server? That would be pretty funny.
- burke 16y agoYep, sure did.
- RossM 16y agoNor my 0 (type a ten, press left then backspace the one).
- alecperkins 16y agoI just updated the results page with a breakdown per-interface. There are more metrics involved, but it'll be a little while before those get pulled together. (The volume of data was unexpected, to say the least, so there weren't any stats helpers in place prior to "launch".) As for "revealing" the answers ahead of time, the whole question of "Pick a number from 1 to 10" and the common result being 7 is well known (ish), so I'm not too worried. Plus, the results aren't visible until you choose. PLUS, there were over 80k votes before that first graph was available, and over 140k by the time I put the per-interface breakdown up. Hopefully, the volume will outweigh the people who try to manipulate it. (There's also IP tracking, which will eventually be used to help filter out anomalies, in addition to geolocating.) I know, it's not exactly precise science, but it's a fun experiment that was simple and kept the friction to a minimum. I'm not exactly trying to write a paper. :) Thanks to everyone who voted and spread the word, especially jedberg who posted it to Reddit.
- malandrew 16y agocan you do this again but with an arbitrary range. I'm curious what happens when you don't have the lucky number effect (i.e. 7)
- AndyKelley 16y agoI picked 9. I feel good about doing my part to even out the distribution I predicted :)
- ot 16y agoCan you do it again for 1 to 100? I'd like to improve my success probability for this http://xkcd.com/628/ http://xkcd.com/628/
- vladd 16y agoJust make her pick a number between 1 and 10, you'll have at least 10 times more success probability.
- StavrosK 16y agoAnd it will be 10 times less impressive.
- reemrevnivek 16y agoSo clearly we should have her pick a number between 1 and 1000!
- ComSubVie 16y agoI guess 42 will be a spike in the results - but it would be interesting to verify ;)
- ot 16y agoAre you implying than the average HNer or Redditer has a different bias wrt the average girl?
- albertzeyer 16y ago43 is actually not bad. I would think that most people would pick something somewhere in the middle. A somewhat similar distribution as with the 1-10 results. Odd numbers more often than even numbers. Prime numbers even more often.
- ZoFreX 16y agoStipulate that both digits must be distinct and odd, then guess 37.
- klochner 16y agoI picked 3 because it's in the easiest number for me to strike (text box version). My mouse is typically in the middle of the screen, closest to the higher-scoring numbers in the graphical version. I'd like to see the results from the same test where you have to type the number as a word for the textbox (e.g., three), and where the numbers aren't laid out in the same numerical order for each user in the graphical version.
- nazgulnarsil 16y agocontrarian pride for 1 or 10.
- Flam 16y agoGlorious #2 Master Race.
- DaniFong 16y agoI thought people would think 10 was the least random number, so I picked it, :-) I won! Yay.
- davidk0101 16y agoI don't get it. How is the selector relevant to what people choose? You might as well have put a different colored rabbit somewhere on the page and measured responses that way.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- albertzeyer 16y agoYay, I tried to guess and pick the number which I thought would probably be picked the least amount of people. 10 was a good guess.
- adolgert 16y agoScience has error bars.
- alecperkins 16y agoScience takes time ;)
- philh 16y agoThe results for 'select' seem strange. That's the only place where random specified/not makes much difference. It also indicates that a lot more people picked numbers under 'select/specified' than any other condition. Have you checked your logs for possible vote stuffing?
- alecperkins 16y agoNot yet, though IP addresses are one of the metrics for each vote. I'm still working on efficient ways of going through everything.
- egypturnash 16y agoI'm getting nothing but "1800".
- alecperkins 16y agoMomentary stupidity on my part. I told it to cache the expire time instead of the actual value. Oops. Go figure, it was the one time I think "Eh, this is a small change. I don't need to go to a testing version first."
- chromejs10 16y agoI'm surprised the number 1 wasn't higher up because of the slider (since it defaults to 1). I guess people aren't as lazy as I thought they were and actually took the effort to move the slider :P