5 ms·

That's a great example, with the arrival time estimates. I wonder whether this effect itself would diminish as more people get to know about it...

• mbreese 4y ago
  And yet, how often are prices at a store still quoted as $4.95? or $10.99? We all know what the psychology of pricing is, and yet it still persists. People are strange and illogical creatures.
  • dymk 4y ago
    Those are "round" numbers by social convention, and our psychology rounds them down.
    • iso1631 4y ago
      I think I automatically round 10.99 to 10, 9.99 to 10, 4.95 to 5, etc.
      • V-2 4y ago
        The first case is bizarre to me, unless that's a typo
        • robocat 4y ago
          > Bizarre They just round more than you: I think your presumption that others should think like you is bizarre. Some people only round to 10 cents. If you are wealthy enough, you could easily round 10.99 to $0.
          • V-2 4y ago
            > I think your presumption that others should think like you is bizarre. What I actually wrote was "bizarre to me", not just "bizarre" (as in your quote), so I don't think it's fair to say that my comment conveyed such presumption
        • kingofpandora 4y ago
          I think it just proves that x.99 pricing works. It tripped up the poster who was trying to claim they mentally round up.
          • iso1631 4y ago
            Which poster was claiming that?
        • iso1631 4y ago
          No it's not, 10.99 for some reason works for me
• dvtrn 4y ago
  Keeping with the arrival time estimate, and I’m not sure if this answers your question But I live in a very dense city (Chicago), it’s become almost “set your watch to it” reliable that not only are estimates more reliable from friends who live here when they say “I’ll be there in 8 minutes”, they’re also seemingly more likely to offer such a precise estimate because they know the area, light timings, and traffic patterns and that certain kind of behavior found among drivers in this city. Compared to when I have friends from out of town renting a car they’ll tell me “GPS says we’ll be there in 10 minutes” I instinctively add another 10 and it’s never failed that they’ll show up and go “that was a long 10 minutes!” And I just smile.
  • hinkley 4y ago
    I lived in a part of town that was in the process of infill so a lot of people “knew” it without really knowing it. It was practically a given that the first time someone visited they would arrive 15-20 minutes later than they estimated. It seemed like an area without a lot of traffic but it was in that uncanny valley where there’s enough traffic where you catch a lot of lights, and you aren’t turning right on red because there are people in front of you, and you may or may not make the left turn light on the first cycle. Also the whole city is so tuned for one direction of traffic that it takes longer to go across the narrow dimension than the long one. There was a movie theater that I found I could reliably get to faster on a Friday evening if I drove five blocks past it and doubled back, the lights were that screwed up. 15 blocks faster than 5.
  • subroutine 4y ago
    In San Diego we just use a blanket "be there in 20 minutes" no matter where you are going.
• jhgb 4y ago
  ...or knew about octal numbers. (Does it even work on old Unix people?)