How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[JoeTheJuggler]

So I guess if someone throws 20 sixes in a row you won't question whether the dice is fair.

I just shuffled a regular deck of cards and dealt out the following five cards:

Jc, 3h, 7h, Ks, 5d

Do you suspect I cheated? After all, the odds against dealing that exact hand are less than 1 in 2.5 million.

 

[Rodney]

I just shuffled a regular deck of cards and dealt out the following five cards:

Jc, 3h, 7h, Ks, 5d

Do you suspect I cheated? After all, the odds against dealing that exact hand are less than 1 in 2.5 million.

No. Now answer my question.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Sounds like a classic example of counting the hits and not counting the misses to me.

 

[Rodney]

Wouldn't you need 366 people for the likelihood to really be 100% (367, if one of them was born on February 29)?

There are 366 different birthdays, and so you would need 367 people to have a 100% chance of a birthday match.

 

[apathoid]

So I guess if someone throws 20 sixes in a row you won't question whether the dice is fair.

Strictly talking theory here, and not any physical properties a real world die may have, 20 sixes is just as likely as any other 20 throw permutation..

 

[fromdownunder]

Wouldn't you need 366 people for the likelihood to really be 100% (367, if one of them was born on February 29)?

No. I doubt if you could possibly ever get 365, or 366, randomly selected people into a room all with different birthdates. The math suggests 99.999999>%, i.e., 100%

I think that a random achievement of this kind would be worthy of the challenge.

Norm

 

[SezMe]

I wonder what happened to Mr. Marshmallow ..

I think he stepped in front of JoeTheJuggler and you can don't need probability theory to predict what happened then.

 

[Hokulele]

Strictly talking theory here, and not any physical properties a real world die may have, 20 sixes is just as likely as any other 20 throw permutation..

In addition, it is a little misleading to compare this to the stories in the OP. It would be more like having a die that threw for 3 sixes in a row on one day, another two on a different day, and so on until you reach 20 throws, completely ignoring all the numbers thrown on the days in between the pairs of sixes.

 

[Rodney]

Strictly talking theory here, and not any physical properties a real world die may have, 20 sixes is just as likely as any other 20 throw permutation..

Yes, but here is what you and others here are missing: If you throw one die 20 times, there are 3,656,158,440,062,976 (3.7 quadrillion) permutations. However, only six of those permutations involve obtaining the same number (all 1's, all 2's, all 3's, all 4's, all 5's, or all 6's) on each throw. So obtaining the same number on 20 consecutive throws is inherently extremely unlikely. That is not true of obtaining a mix of 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, and 6's -- such as three 1's, five 2's, four 3's, two 4's, three 5's, and three 6's. (If you don't believe me, try throwing a die yourself 20 times and see what you obtain.) By the logic being employed here, a die could be thrown a billion times and have the same number come up each time and a "skeptic" would say: "Nothing unusual going on here, some pattern had to come up and I guess it just happened to be this one."

 

[fromdownunder]

Yes, but here is what you and others here are missing: If you throw one die 20 times, there are 3,656,158,440,062,976 (3.7 quintillion) permutations. However, only six of those permutations involve obtaining the same number (all 1's, all 2's, all 3's, all 4's, all 5's, or all 6's) on each throw. So obtaining the same number on 20 consecutive throws is inherently extremely unlikely. That is not true of obtaining a mix of 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, and 6's -- such as three 1's, five 2's, four 3's, two 4's, three 5's, and three 6's. (If you don't believe me, try throwing a die yourself 20 times and see what you obtain.) By the logic being employed here, a die could be thrown a billion times and have the same number come up each time and a "skeptic" would say: "Nothing unusual going on here, some pattern had to come up and I guess it just happened to be this one."

What you are missing here (and I will assume that the Math. is correct, is that any order i.e., 1, 5, 2, 6, 4. 2, 1 6, 6, 6, etc. IF ATTEMPTED TO BE PREDICTED IN ADVANCE is as equally unlikely as sets of ones, twos or sixes. but at the end of the day, if you actually do it, then it is in retrospect, the order the numbers came out in. And they are as equally unlikely as any set of a single number (eg, six)


Norm

 

[Rodney]

What you are missing here (and I will assume that the Math. is correct, is that any order i.e., 1, 5, 2, 6, 4. 2, 1 6, 6, 6, etc. IF ATTEMPTED TO BE PREDICTED IN ADVANCE is as equally unlikely as sets of ones, twos or sixes. but at the end of the day, if you actually do it, then it is in retrospect, the order the numbers came out in. And they are as equally unlikely as any set of a single number (eg, six)

Norm

If you believe that this tautology has relevance to synchronicity, please explain what that relevance is. After you've done that, please explain how you would test the hypothesis that synchronicity exists.

 

[apathoid]

Yes, but here is what you and others here are missing: If you throw one die 20 times, there are 3,656,158,440,062,976 (3.7 quadrillion) permutations. However, only six of those permutations involve obtaining the same number (all 1's, all 2's, all 3's, all 4's, all 5's, or all 6's) on each throw. So obtaining the same number on 20 consecutive throws is inherently extremely unlikely. That is not true of obtaining a mix of 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, and 6's -- such as three 1's, five 2's, four 3's, two 4's, three 5's, and three 6's. (If you don't believe me, try throwing a die yourself 20 times and see what you obtain.) By the logic being employed here, a die could be thrown a billion times and have the same number come up each time and a "skeptic" would say: "Nothing unusual going on here, some pattern had to come up and I guess it just happened to be this one."

Of course there is a much greater chance of mixed results, rather than all one number. No one can possibly dispute that. Now roll a real die 20 times, that result had the exact same chance of coming up as 20 sixes, agree?

 

[SezMe]

After you've done that, please explain how you would test the hypothesis that synchronicity exists.

First you're going to have to define it.

 

[StanBearclaw]

I'll admit, I tried looking into these as well.

...

The second story from that first page:
Two seconds on google returned this:
No mention of it being the same baby.

Damn it, I came here to post this. Since you got to the bottom of that one, I decided to look into the one about people who keep eating Richard Parkers:

_{In the 19th century, the famous horror writer, Egdar Allan Poe, wrote a book called 'The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym'. It was about four survivors of a shipwreck who were in an open boat for many days before they decided to kill and eat the cabin boy whose name was Richard Parker. Some years later, in 1884, the yawl, Mignonette, foundered, with only four survivors, who were in an open boat for many days. Eventually, the three senior members of the crew, killed and ate the cabin boy. The name of the cabin boy was Richard Parker.}

This one actually turns out to be true, however when I was looking on wikipedia, it turns out that the coincidence hunters weren't satisfied with just two incidents:

In 1846, the Francis Spaight foundered at sea. The survivors resorted to cannibalism, with seaman Richard Parker being the victim

[Source: http://www.psychics.co.uk/coincidences/forteantimes_letters.html]

A little digging on Google Books destroyed that "source". You can sleep soundly tonight, confident that wikipedia is that much truer now!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Parker_(shipwrecked)

 

[Marshmallow]

Sorry for disappearing for so long. Thanks for looking into this, guys. I guess I don't have a very good understanding of probability.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If you throw one die 20 times, there are 3.7 quadrillion permutations.

In which case if anyone ever rolled 20 sixes, I'd definitely presume the die was loaded. However many permutations of 20 rolls we can think of with an obvious pattern, it's still so few that it's unlikely any has ever happened since dice were invented. So, yeah, I think the the probability of loaded dice existing is higher than the probability of 20 sixes turning up.

 

[Rodney]

First you're going to have to define it.

According to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary, the number 1 and 2 definitions are:

1 : the quality or fact of being synchronous
2 : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synchronicity

Because the first definition is circular, let's go with definition 2.

 

[The Don]

If you believe that this tautology has relevance to synchronicity, please explain what that relevance is. After you've done that, please explain how you would test the hypothesis that synchronicity exists.

Just having something unlikely happen is not any indication of anything paranormal taking place. After all, the chances of my father having Nevada plate "CDV294" was infinitessimally small and yet it happened.

Unless someone predicts and repeats the effect it's like blazing away at the side of a barn and drawing a ring around a set of holes that happen to be close together and then claiming that it's evidence of exceptional marksmanship.

 

[cyborg]

Events with unknown causality chains E1, E2, E3, E4... occur.

If the set of events E has human meaning M then events demostrate synchronicity; otherwise ignore them as the universe is centred around human existence.

 

[RSLancastr]

One woo phrase which I hate is "there are no coincidences". what, no two things ever happen at the same time?