Totally Random

[radiojake]

I read this article today in a magazine, and it made me think of CC and the dice complainers - Unfortunatly I haven't found a link to the whole article, rather I have just re-typed half of it.

For anyone who has complained about the dice not being random, please read this:


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Here's a party trick. Get two friends. One will flip a coin 30 times and write down the sequence of heads and tails. The other will imagine flipping a coin 30 times and also write the sequence of results. They do this in secret, so you don't know who has flipped the real coin and who has flipped the imaginary one. The "wow" moment comes when you're presented with the two lists of heads and tails and it's usually instantly obvious which is which.

"So What?" you may say. Well, this simple trick touches on some deep and bizarre mathematical ideas with great relevance to the real world. The underlying message is that humans find the concept of randomness very hard to understand (emphasis added), and this can get us into big trouble. Randomness fools us all - sometimes in entertaining ways, but sometimes with devastating consequences.

Back to the party trick. We have two lists of heads and tails: one from the real coin and one from the imaginary coin. The first list is properly random. The second list is a human attempting to be random. You can tell the difference because humans are very, very bad at faking randomness. We just can't do it.
There are different ways to tell the fake and real randomness apart, but the most obvious is to look for runs of straight heads, or straight tails. If one of the lists has a run of five heads or tails in a row, you can be pretty sure that's the real coin. In a list of 30 coin-flips you're reasonably likely to get a run of five.
When someone is imagining coin-flips, however, they almost never imagine a run of five-straight heads of tails. This is because after two or three heads our brains tend to think, "OK, time for a tails now." Our brains are implementing an order, a "coin memory", whereas in fact true randomness has no memory or what came before. Randomness creates counter-intuitively large clusters, such as a run of five heads in 30 flips of a coin, which leads to unexpected results.

As humans, when we come across random clusters we naturally superimpose a pattern. We instinctively project an order on the chaos. It's a part of our psychological make-up. For example, when the iPod first came out and people started to use the shuffle feature, which plays songs in a random order, many people complained that it didn't work. They said that too often songs from the same album, or the same artist, came up one after another. Yet that's what randomness does - it creates counter-intuitively dense clusters. In response to complaints from users, Apple CEO Stever Jobs changed the programming behind the feature: "We're making it [the shuffle] less random to make it feel more random." In other words, each new song now has to be significantly different from what came before, so as to conform to our expectation or randomness. Which isn't really random at all......

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The article then goes on to talk about gambling and poker machine addicts

[Woodruff]

As humans, when we come across random clusters we naturally superimpose a pattern. We instinctively project an order on the chaos. It's a part of our psychological make-up. For example, when the iPod first came out and people started to use the shuffle feature, which plays songs in a random order, many people complained that it didn't work. They said that too often songs from the same album, or the same artist, came up one after another. Yet that's what randomness does - it creates counter-intuitively dense clusters. In response to complaints from users, Apple CEO Stever Jobs changed the programming behind the feature: "We're making it [the shuffle] less random to make it feel more random."

This is the key, right here. This is precisely what the dice-complainers want. And what should not be allowed to happen.

[natty dread]

Good article!

[Joodoo]

I endorse this thread, though that doesn't mean much.

[AndyDufresne]

I endorse you legitimately typing up half an article. That is dedication to a cause. I salute you.


--Andy

[JelleR]

Excellent article indeed. Always enjoy a fresh perspective and I never heared about this one yet.

For all the connaiseurs: pick up Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. Very interesting and lots of links with Risk.

[PenalCode]

Or better yet...like in my other post in the other 'dice' thread....just go sit at the black jack table for a few hours. or better yet, go if you're in asia, go to the dice games. Those crazy strings of 'improbable' outcomes happen more frequently than you would think it would.

[trinicardinal]

I'd love to see the full article. Hope you find a link for it.

[Jatekos]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22The+other+will+ ... 0+times%22

[rdsrds2120]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22The+other+will+imagine+flipping+a+coin+30+times%22

This guy, this guy.

Anywho, that was a pretty swell article. I loved just the section we are able to read that you painstakingly typed up, bravo. Now if only everyone would read that post.

-rd

[squishyg]

Great post! The comparison to shuffling was illuminating.

[Victor Sullivan]

Amen, brother, amen...

[natty dread]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22The+other+will+imagine+flipping+a+coin+30+times%22

Funny thing is, this page comes first on those search results...

[pamoa]

well nothing is never random
flipping a coin is about physics law and the initial amount of energy you give to it
which is never the same but certainly not random

what we call random is about unpredictability
when a very minor change in the equation give very distinctive effect
this minor change is behind our perception
and so the result is unpredictable

but what players complain about is unfairness
when you can reasonably predict that an 26 vs 2 attack is a winning one
you can not accept easily you lost it and the game with it
(it really happens to me and trust me it took me a while to believe it)

and because our loved game is about warfare
in real life it never NEVER existed
that 26 divisions were defeated by only 2 in a even fight
so this result is unfair to reality
and can get you really mad
I mean REALLY mad

[Mr_Adams]

well nothing is ever random
flipping a coin is about physics law and the initial amount of energy you give to it

flipping a quarter, you get about 50.7% heads because of the distribution of weight in the pressed faces, for example.


Also, keeping with the perfect randomness, and proof I did for myself on the concept given in the thread, I confirmed the idea that you should get a run of 5 in 30 flips. The probability of getting 5 in a row is 1 in 16. there are 25 sets of 5 between 1 and 30, so you should in fact get the set of 5. you have a good chance of getting 6 in a row for that matter (1 in 32 given 25 opportunities). Another example is if you get a group of any larger than 14, you have over a 15% chance of having 2 people with the same birth date.

[rdsrds2120]

well nothing is ever random
flipping a coin is about physics law and the initial amount of energy you give to it

flipping a quarter, you get about 50.7% heads because of the distribution of weight in the pressed faces, for example.


Also, keeping with the perfect randomness, and proof I did for myself on the concept given in the thread, I confirmed the idea that you should get a run of 5 in 30 flips. The probability of getting 5 in a row is 1 in 16. there are 25 sets of 5 between 1 and 30, so you should in fact get the set of 5. you have a good chance of getting 6 in a row for that matter (1 in 32 given 25 opportunities). Another example is if you get a group of any larger than 14, you have over a 15% chance of having 2 people with the same birth date.

To the year or the day? Either way, now I know that coins are not random. Good thing we use di-- erm, Intensity Cubes!

-rd

[Mr_Adams]

well nothing is ever random
flipping a coin is about physics law and the initial amount of energy you give to it

flipping a quarter, you get about 50.7% heads because of the distribution of weight in the pressed faces, for example.


Also, keeping with the perfect randomness, and proof I did for myself on the concept given in the thread, I confirmed the idea that you should get a run of 5 in 30 flips. The probability of getting 5 in a row is 1 in 16. there are 25 sets of 5 between 1 and 30, so you should in fact get the set of 5. you have a good chance of getting 6 in a row for that matter (1 in 32 given 25 opportunities). Another example is if you get a group of any larger than 14, you have over a 15% chance of having 2 people with the same birth date.

To the year or the day? Either way, now I know that coins are not random. Good thing we use di-- erm, Intensity Cubes!

-rd

a coin is still random. just not perfect 50/50 odds.

[rdsrds2120]

Right, my bad.

-rd

[elfish_lad]

I can't believe I haven't commented on this article. I thought I did.

Awesome.

And thanks for the reprint mate.

This should be mandatory reading for all new players at CC!

Cheers.

E.

[Mr_Adams]

well nothing is ever random
flipping a coin is about physics law and the initial amount of energy you give to it

flipping a quarter, you get about 50.7% heads because of the distribution of weight in the pressed faces, for example.


Also, keeping with the perfect randomness, and proof I did for myself on the concept given in the thread, I confirmed the idea that you should get a run of 5 in 30 flips. The probability of getting 5 in a row is 1 in 16. there are 25 sets of 5 between 1 and 30, so you should in fact get the set of 5. you have a good chance of getting 6 in a row for that matter (1 in 32 given 25 opportunities). Another example is if you get a group of any larger than 14, you have over a 15% chance of having 2 people with the same birth date.

To the year or the day?

Just the date. Go into chat on a busy day and try it out.

[Stegura]

well nothing is ever random
flipping a coin is about physics law and the initial amount of energy you give to it

flipping a quarter, you get about 50.7% heads because of the distribution of weight in the pressed faces, for example.


Also, keeping with the perfect randomness, and proof I did for myself on the concept given in the thread, I confirmed the idea that you should get a run of 5 in 30 flips. The probability of getting 5 in a row is 1 in 16. there are 25 sets of 5 between 1 and 30, so you should in fact get the set of 5. you have a good chance of getting 6 in a row for that matter (1 in 32 given 25 opportunities). Another example is if you get a group of any larger than 14, you have over a 15% chance of having 2 people with the same birth date.

To the year or the day? Either way, now I know that coins are not random. Good thing we use di-- erm, Intensity Cubes!

-rd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of explaining the (seemingly confusing) Birthday Problem. A group of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that one pair will have matching birthdays, to the day.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this, so maybe this will help:
The tough part is thinking that you're only comparing one person's birthday to the other 22, which produces quite less probability of matching birthdays. The trick is to realize that you're comparing each person in the room to every single other person! So instead of having 22 'pairs' of possibility matches, you actually wind up with 253 (for our test group of 23 people) 'pairs' of possible matches!

Hope that helped

[No Risk No Fun]

Good stuff!

Like some have been saying, I think people get mad when they should statistically win an attack by a long shot, but end up getting rebuffed, costing them the game. But as the great Han Solo once said, "Never tell me the odds".

[sonicsteve]

Here's a party trick...

Party trick, eh?

Excellent post and article and all that, but if I'm at a party and someone suggests I start writing down random coin tosses as a fun activity, then I'm leaving to look for the party with the wine and the ping pong balls.

[radiojake]

Here's a party trick...

Party trick, eh?

Excellent post and article and all that, but if I'm at a party and someone suggests I start writing down random coin tosses as a fun activity, then I'm leaving to look for the party with the wine and the ping pong balls.

I just merely re-typed the article - but I would agree that playing table tennis would be much more interesting at a party -

[SirSebstar]

Here's a party trick...

Party trick, eh?

Excellent post and article and all that, but if I'm at a party and someone suggests I start writing down random coin tosses as a fun activity, then I'm leaving to look for the party with the wine and the ping pong balls.

I think you do the coins because you are already drunk the wine, and put the pingpong balls somewhere else... lol