Higher than "chance"

[Suezoled]

I'm sure there are several people who scored higher than the chance when they did something.

For example, I was able to guess whether a playing card not known to me was red or black, and I was right for 48 cards. Now, mind you, I was about 11 years old, so I wasn't thinking probabilities, or the average number of times black showed up. It was just a series of lucky guesses.

Someone also told me I'm a telepath and that I'm a receiver, especially for electronic transmissions, especially microwaves (????) and their messages about the precise time the timer will beep and/or the leftover bacon will be done.

The latter has nothing to do with the former, but I thought it was funny to mention.

I can hear your microwave speaking.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

If you could repeat, constantly, that many guesses, then we would have to conclude that something is happening. But if it was just one time, it doesnt mean anything. And I mean anything.

 

[PixyMisa]

I'm sure there are several people who scored higher than the chance when they did something.

For example, I was able to guess whether a playing card not known to me was red or black, and I was right for 48 cards. Now, mind you, I was about 11 years old, so I wasn't thinking probabilities, or the average number of times black showed up. It was just a series of lucky guesses.

That's one hell of a series of lucky guesses.

If you really did get it right 48 times in a row, that's a one in 281,474,976,710,656 chance. Which is quite extraordinary.

 

[Timothy]

Re: Re: Higher than "chance"

If you really did get it right 48 times in a row, that's a one in 281,474,976,710,656 chance. Which is quite extraordinary.

That would be true if each card selection was independent and random.

Not enough information was given, though. 48 in a row? 48 out of 52? 48 out of 96? Shuffle after each selection, or all out of the same deck with already chosen cards being discarded? Exaggerated childhood memory?

Each results in a different probability.

- Timothy

 

[Sloe_Bohemian]

It happens.

Tonight at work I was compiling data in a spreadsheet that I update every hour during a 9 hour shift of every weekday... of the dozens of fields I was putting numbers into I was stopped cold when I typed in [81.16%] in column J. I immediately recognized that I had entered the number [8,116] in column D only moments before.

The two numbers were generated by two different sources recording very different data. I was tempted to try and calculate the odds of having the numbers 8,1,1,6 appear in sequence in two different fields during the same day... but then the urge went away when I realized I'd have to do math and that would be icky.

It's unusual, but hardly a miracle. Especially since the large number is a running sum and every day it will start below 1,000 and finish above 10,000... so that it's sequence is bound to cross a number with the same sequence as whatever percentage is being recorded at the time... and with changes in the percentage... the two number sequences can match several times in a day. It's not likely... but it isn't numerology.


OK, that's it... I just realized how boring this was... I'm out of here before I do anymore damage.

 

[PixyMisa]

Re: Re: Re: Higher than "chance"

That would be true if each card selection was independent and random.

Not enough information was given, though. 48 in a row? 48 out of 52? 48 out of 96? Shuffle after each selection, or all out of the same deck with already chosen cards being discarded? Exaggerated childhood memory?

Each results in a different probability.

- Timothy

True, particularly the last. But it's still pretty darn improbable.

 

[Zep]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Higher than "chance"

True, particularly the last. But it's still pretty darn improbable.

Not at all. If the cards had just been picked up after a game of Patience (Solitaire for the USAians) and not shuffled, they would have been in an easily guessable order after the first few cards had come out. The only little skip would have been in changing suit two times.

Working backwards from this, if the pack was very lightly shuffled there would still be large groups of cards still in order that would form "runs" that could be easily guessed. It is only the end of these runs that cause problems guessing (i.e. until you manage to pick up the "flow" of the next run). Naturally, the more randomness in the pack, the shorter these runs become, and the more likely the run "skips" occur.

And as Timothy said, much can also be inferred depending on the process used.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yeah, but what if they were playing Bridge? What then, eh?

 

[Suezoled]

Okay, more info:

It was only once through the deck.
There were 52 cards.
Trish (the one who held the cards) was the only one to handle them; she shuffled them (she shuffles them very well, I might add... we used to play games of Spit and Rummy and she handled the cards much better).
Remember: I was 11 years old.

As I said, I think it was very very lucky. And no, I don't think I could do it again. You evil skeptics would obviously block my powers. Or something.

Anyway, I was curious about other people and the things they noticed, did, or what not that seemed, if not repeatable, at least greater than chance that one time.

 

[Interesting Ian]

If you could repeat, constantly, that many guesses, then we would have to conclude that something is happening. But if it was just one time, it doesnt mean anything. And I mean anything.

Nonsense, you couldn't achieve that by chance! Get real.

Pseudo-skepticism!

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Higher than "chance"

That's one hell of a series of lucky guesses.

If you really did get it right 48 times in a row, that's a one in 281,474,976,710,656 chance. Which is quite extraordinary.

Not in a row. But yes it's beyond chance.

 

[ShowMe]

Seems to me that if you have enough people doing things, then individual accomplishments may seem miraculous.

I remember when I was younger my brother and I were shooting rubber bands at each other. His stopped in midair once; turns out he had hit a fly in mid-flight. I would imagine the odds to be pretty high for that to happen...but it's probably happened somewhere else on the planet, at some time.

Enough people playing the lottery and someone is going to win.

Take a section of sky, look far enough into space and you're bound to find something interesting...eventually.

Get a million psychics to all make a five guesses each and one of them is bound to get everything right.

 

[Jocce]

Nonsense, you couldn't achieve that by chance! Get real.

You're very fond of factual statements Ian. Of course it can be done by chance... once. But then it better take pretty close to 281,474,976,710,656 tries before it happens again.

That's what chance, probabilty, is all about. Once is nothing, two and more can start telling you something.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Nonsense, you couldn't achieve that by chance! Get real.

Pseudo-skepticism!

If a phenomena is no repeatable, why would you call it phenomena at all? In all truth I dont like, particularly, the concept "chance", in fact I would say that I dont know why it happened, I have no enough information to assert anything.

If he guessed 48 times right, thats what happened, I cant explain it, but I also do not need to explain it. It doesnt mean anything. It doesnt point to anywhere. It is fair to call it "chance".

 

[jmercer]

Hey, folks, look - people have winning streaks in casinos all the time. Of course, they usually end up having a longer losing streak where all the money (and then some) returns to the coffers of the casino. But, it happens.

We have enough statistians around here that everyone should realize that spikes in the data exist, and aren't really all that strange. They just look significant when the appear in a very small sampling of data, such as the one described here.

Suezoled had an exciting encounter with the odds is all.

 

[Ashles]

Re: Re: Re: Higher than "chance"

Not in a row. But yes it's beyond chance.

Ian could you please inform us all what odds are the 'cut off point' for chance?

Obviously 1 in 2 is allowed by you. Presumably 1 in 14,000,000 is okay as that is the odds of the lottery and people have won that (or is that 'beyond chance'?).

According to you one in 281,474,976,710,656 is beyond chance so, just for future reference what's the cut off point?

It appears to be one in somewhere between 14,000,000 and 281,474,976,710,656, but we'd appreciate your clarification.

Or should we just add statistics and probability to the ever expanding list of things you don't understand?

 

[sackett]

Here we can see the futility of Impossible Ian's position. He belligerently declares Suzoled's anecdote to be evidence, in fact proof, of the paranormal.

If we accept this isolated event as proof of something, the next questions to ask are, Now what? Where do we go from this single datum?

The thinking mind immediately replies: test Suzoled, to see if this event can be replicated. The thinking mind wants more information. Otherwise, we're left at a dead end, with nothing established - and if we reject thinking and believe like I.I., we'll never get a step farther.

No wonder Implacable Iain keeps posting here. He's lonely and bored. There's not much to do down at the end of his little blind alley.

Scarey too, I'll bet. Hell, he's even scared of me.

 

[Ashles]

Hang on, the odds against the sperm and eggs of Ian's parents and all his forbearers eggs and sperms combining in the way they have are way way way higher than one in 281,474,976,710,656.

Therefore this must not have happened.

By Ian's own logic Ian does not exist.

I suppose, based on the way Ian uses 'logic', this outcome was inevitable really.
His demonstaration of his own non-existence was only a matter of time.

 

[Garrette]

Originally posted by Ashles:

Hang on, the odds against the sperm and eggs of Ian's parents and all his forbearers eggs and sperms combining in the way they have are way way way higher than one in 281,474,976,710,656.

Therefore this must not have happened.

By Ian's own logic Ian does not exist.

Nonsense.

It proves Ian is supernatural.

 

[Garrette]

I submit the possibility that this didn't happen after all.

{Only the possibility, mind you.}

Magicians frequently present effects as if the spectator is the one who caused/performed them, acting bewildering while in reality being the one who (mundanely) engineered the whole thing.

This would be a very simple trick to do on an adult or an eleven year old.

I could teach my own eleven year old how to get his thirteen year old brother to "predict" card colors so that he was mostly or totally accurate.