Merged Telepathy test: which number did I write?

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(the number of goals in the ladies hockey final last night)

Yay, another number-pickin' thread!
 
Akhenaten said:
Is that taking into consideration the perverse delight that most of us take in picking anything but the numbers given in the OP?
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Good point. The percentage of telepaths actually must be estimated to be higher than 1 in 4, because those who have the ability, need to give silly nonsense answers to hide the fact that they know what the real answer is.
 
Akhenaten said:
Is that taking into consideration the perverse delight that most of us take in picking anything but the numbers given in the OP?
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Yes. Those people are what are called "negative hits" in parapsychology. That's where your ESP gives you the wrong answer, and is demonstrated by how much more poorly than chance you perform on the test.

I am not making this up.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Yes. Those people are what are called "negative hits" in parapsychology. That's where your ESP gives you the wrong answer, and is demonstrated by how much more poorly than chance you perform on the test.

I am not making this up.
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Really? I weep for the world.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Yes. Those people are what are called "negative hits" in parapsychology. That's where your ESP gives you the wrong answer, and is demonstrated by how much more poorly than chance you perform on the test.

I am not making this up.
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I have seen people who test for psychic powers say exactly what AvalonXQ has described. I am not convinced that it is all that rare in the psychic testing world.
 
I was gonna say cucumber, but that would put things into a pickle here, no matter how you slice it.
 
All I see is a numerical value.
Hang on I'll work it out with a pencil..
Now I feel relief :/
 
I'm rather surprised so many people are playing along... Well, as far as even responding to this post goes.

Even if people did guess the number, what does this has to do with telepathy? Guessing a number would be just that... a guess.

If the number is 4 and some of us guess 4, that doesn't mean we had a telepathic link to you... It simply means we guessed 4.

I like James Randi's psychic challenge the best... where he locks away an object in a safe every day.

By the way, today's object is a block of cheese, just sayin'.
 
IceSage said:
I'm rather surprised so many people are playing along... Well, as far as even responding to this post goes.

Even if people did guess the number, what does this has to do with telepathy? Guessing a number would be just that... a guess.

If the number is 4 and some of us guess 4, that doesn't mean we had a telepathic link to you... It simply means we guessed 4.

I like James Randi's psychic challenge the best... where he locks away an object in a safe every day.

By the way, today's object is a block of cheese, just sayin'.
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We are not playing along. We are just playing.
I think that the clear majority of responses were not integers ranging from 1 to 4.
 
Michel H said:
Dave Rogers said:
Could I suggest, though, that you look into the poll function on the forums? You may need to have made more posts to use it, but there are plenty of more light-headedhearted sub-forums where you can quickly amass some.

Dave
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Good idea, Dave ;) . I might post a poll on my next test on this forum (if I do one). By the way, I don't think a minimum number of posts is necessary to make a poll (this applies, to my knowledge, only to URLs), I have already begun making one in the Test sub-forum, in the "Forum Help & Member Support" section. Information about poll creating is here:
h ttp://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=223872&highlight=poll (please remove space between "h" and "t" in this modified URL).
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Lord Emsworth said:
You should have made this a poll.
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One disadvantage of polls, however, is that some people might answer in the poll without writing any comment, which would make it difficult (or even impossible)for me to assess the credibilities of their answers.
I speak based on experience, because I have already done a poll on another site (see http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/11761501 ).
 
Michel H said:
One disadvantage of polls, however, is that some people might answer in the poll without writing any comment, which would make it difficult (or even impossible)for me to assess the credibilities of their answers.
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I like this. So the only credible answers, as judged by you, will be the ones that got the right answer, therefore you will claim 100% success?

Norm
 
IceSage said:
Even if people did guess the number, what does this has to do with telepathy? Guessing a number would be just that... a guess.

If the number is 4 and some of us guess 4, that doesn't mean we had a telepathic link to you... It simply means we guessed 4.
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Well, IceSage, in order to be able to draw a conclusion, a statistical analysis has to be made. For example, if I say that I wrote one of the five numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on my sheet of paper, and I wrote "5" (but this I don't say, you have to guess it), and I get 20 answers, out of which 15 are correct, when I would expect about 20/5 = 4 correct answers without telepathy, I would say that telepathy has been proved at a probability level given by the binomial distribution (see http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx ) as p = 1.80 E-07. So, rather convincingly, although replication may be necessary. The idea of such an analysis is explained here: http://www-ist.massey.ac.nz/dstirlin/CAST/CAST/HtestPropn/testPropn3.html ).
 
Michel H said:
Well, IceSage, in order to be able to draw a conclusion, a statistical analysis has to be made. For example, if I say that I wrote one of the five numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on my sheet of paper, and I wrote "5" (but this I don't say, you have to guess it), and I get 20 answers, out of which 15 are correct, when I would expect about 20/5 = 4 correct answers without telepathy, I would say that telepathy has been proved at a probability level given by the binomial distribution (see http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx ) as p = 1.80 E-07. So, rather convincingly, although replication may be necessary. The idea of such an analysis is explained here: http://www-ist.massey.ac.nz/dstirlin/CAST/CAST/HtestPropn/testPropn3.html ).
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No.

It proves that out of 20, 15 people randomly choose the number you picked. Increase the number of people by a 10 fold, a 100 fold or even a 1000 fold, the number of the answers would start to approach each other.

Roll a die six times, what results do you get? Roll a die a thousand times, what results do you get now?
 
Also, each die roll is independent of the previous roll, i.e. a die does't remember.

Whereas on a forum, the posters could be influenced (unconsciously) by posts made by previous posters.
 
Michel H said:
One disadvantage of polls, however, is that some people might answer in the poll without writing any comment, which would make it difficult (or even impossible)for me to assess the credibilities of their answers.
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I have some bad news for you.

Assessing people's credibilities on the basis of comments that they write is called 'reading'. Telepathy is something altogether different.


Michel H said:
I speak based on experience, because I have already done a poll on another site (see http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/11761501 ).
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As if one was needed, here we have yet another demonstration that experience ≠ learning anything.
 
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