> In a class I taught at Berkeley, I did an experiment where I wrote a simple little program that would let people type either “f” or “d” and would predict which key they were going to push next. It’s actually very easy to write a program that will make the right prediction about 70% of the time. Most people don’t really know how to type randomly. They’ll have too many alternations and so on. There will be all sorts of patterns, so you just have to build some sort of probabilistic model. Even a very crude one will do well. I couldn’t even beat my own program, knowing exactly how it worked. I challenged people to try this and the program was getting between 70% and 80% prediction rates. Then, we found one student that the program predicted exactly 50% of the time. We asked him what his secret was and he responded that he “just used his free will.”
There's another version where a stats professor divides people into two groups. One group flips a coin 50 times and writes on a whiteboard the results. The other comes up with 50 results.
They leave the room and when they come back immediately know which is which. Specifically because of the over-alternation that yours mentioned. A string of HHHHHH is exactly as likely as HTHTHT, but people don't intuit that.
This isn't very interesting, but it scratched an itch I had to see what would happen.
The house's record
The house called 18 of your 190 scored numbers: 9%.
Blind guessing would average about 21.1 of them (11%).
Only 1 of the 206 people in a psychology study was more random than you. The house found you extremely hard to read.
I really want to know who was more random than a RNG
It might not be that someone is more random than an RNG, but that the distribution of numbers in your 190 vs. theirs appears more "random". It's a limited sample size.
If yours happened to contain consecutive digits or common ones (ending in zero, significant numbers like 911 or 42 or 69), that would imply less randomness even if it's actually the result of "real" RNG.
> The house called 1 of your 32 scored numbers: 3%. Blind guessing would average about 3.6 of them (11%). Only 1 of the 206 people in a psychology study was more random than you. The house found you extremely hard to read.
What about the following strategy? You first think of a random integer n1 from 1 to 9, then you think of another one n2, perhaps one that you have not used very often, and finally say (n1+n2) mod 9 + 1. I think this strategy could make your selection more random . Perhaps someone could try it and report the results.
This is pretty interesting. I've found it's fun to throw off the algorithm. Use your warmup to repeatedly guess the same number, and then don't use it for a while.
I found it interesting when I felt my focus shift from the number-generating task to noticing (and responding to) the house’s guesses.
As soon as I noticed it repeating its guess, I had a good long run of adversarially avoiding that number… it’s kind of fun being on the machine side of the slot-machine-type racket!
The first time I did badly. But the second time I got really far by deciding on a number instinctively and then picking something next to it. Maybe we instinctively pick similar numbers, but if we fight our instincts we end up with something truly random.
Alternating and advancing from both ends seems to work, it calls n-1, and n+1 correctly if the previous guess was n, but got no calls in a sequence like - 1, 8, 3, 7, 4, 7, 1, 7, 3, 8, etc
Yup! Most of the way I put the system together was by having it build several n-gram Markov models of your numerical sequences on the fly.
But we also have a couple of predictors that aren’t markov chains and are based on simpler heuristics. Without seeing your record, I'm guessing that the "numerical avoider" predictor got overweighted and just kept trying to guess the same number.
I just pretended I'm playing piano to a megamix of tracks which popped into my head and did 'well'. Only 2 people more random. Typing though, think the site said that's "easier to win" on. Cba to speak 200 numbers out loud :/
Haha, that’s great. Yeah, I totally get what you mean about speaking out loud.
You only really need to vocalize about ~40 numbers total, but you can actually get a similar level of RNG by "subvocalizing the numbers" before you press them on the keypad.
The main issue is that using the keypad kind of lends itself to just pressing it randomly without really thinking about the actual numbers themselves.
"You spread your picks more evenly than a random draw would. Your most-used number made up 23% of your picks, where a random draw's busiest number gets about 23%."
I have a little "mad-lib templatized" set of sentences for reporting on various stats, and that one was supposed to be sort of related to the law of small numbers. For example, shorter runs mean there is a larger probability of getting lopsided distributions (different from pure 11%).
It's supposed to demonstrate that even though you used a single number a disproportionate number of times, it's not necessarily statistically significant since shorter RNG runs can produce the same effects.
This is a nice spin on the Aaronson oracle:
> In a class I taught at Berkeley, I did an experiment where I wrote a simple little program that would let people type either “f” or “d” and would predict which key they were going to push next. It’s actually very easy to write a program that will make the right prediction about 70% of the time. Most people don’t really know how to type randomly. They’ll have too many alternations and so on. There will be all sorts of patterns, so you just have to build some sort of probabilistic model. Even a very crude one will do well. I couldn’t even beat my own program, knowing exactly how it worked. I challenged people to try this and the program was getting between 70% and 80% prediction rates. Then, we found one student that the program predicted exactly 50% of the time. We asked him what his secret was and he responded that he “just used his free will.”
I'd never heard of the Aaronson oracle so thanks for the link!
I actually built this on a whim after watching that episode of TNG where Data locks everyone out of the Enterprise.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=rERApU26PcA
There's another version where a stats professor divides people into two groups. One group flips a coin 50 times and writes on a whiteboard the results. The other comes up with 50 results.
They leave the room and when they come back immediately know which is which. Specifically because of the over-alternation that yours mentioned. A string of HHHHHH is exactly as likely as HTHTHT, but people don't intuit that.
Here it is:
https://aaronsonoracle.com/
I got 64% at 50 steps in, then dropped down to 53%.
The secret? I distracted myself with the website text and kept pressing the buttons quickly without thinking about it.
Must have been looking at some external random source
Rather than attempt to be random, knowing that I'm not, I wanted to see how well it can predict Math.random:
This isn't very interesting, but it scratched an itch I had to see what would happen. I really want to know who was more random than a RNGIt might not be that someone is more random than an RNG, but that the distribution of numbers in your 190 vs. theirs appears more "random". It's a limited sample size.
If yours happened to contain consecutive digits or common ones (ending in zero, significant numbers like 911 or 42 or 69), that would imply less randomness even if it's actually the result of "real" RNG.
I know pi to 100 decimal places and so that was pretty easy to cheat it
Is anyone sufficiently paranoid that their first thought was, "Are you going to train a model on my voice?"
(Yes, I saw the "type the numbers" option.)
Why would they when there are thousands of hours of radio and podcasts do train on?
Maybe they are not training to make a TTS, but training on accents to make STT.
And all that GOOG-411 data!
"Hey its me ur grandson"
No, I thought of the penguin of doom...
Holds up spork
Ah, you see they are doing something far more random…
Yes, my mind went directly here
> The house called 1 of your 32 scored numbers: 3%. Blind guessing would average about 3.6 of them (11%). Only 1 of the 206 people in a psychology study was more random than you. The house found you extremely hard to read.
What about the following strategy? You first think of a random integer n1 from 1 to 9, then you think of another one n2, perhaps one that you have not used very often, and finally say (n1+n2) mod 9 + 1. I think this strategy could make your selection more random . Perhaps someone could try it and report the results.
> Only 7 of the 206 people in a psychology study were more random than you. The house found you extremely hard to read.
I started just lagging the guesses of the machine, and it never seemed to catch on.
Didn't work for me, it started guessing them with 100% rate after just few of my replied guesses.
I did mix it up. So, 3 or 4 trailing guesses and then some random clicks and then trailing is what I did.
This is pretty interesting. I've found it's fun to throw off the algorithm. Use your warmup to repeatedly guess the same number, and then don't use it for a while.
I found it interesting when I felt my focus shift from the number-generating task to noticing (and responding to) the house’s guesses.
As soon as I noticed it repeating its guess, I had a good long run of adversarially avoiding that number… it’s kind of fun being on the machine side of the slot-machine-type racket!
The first time I did badly. But the second time I got really far by deciding on a number instinctively and then picking something next to it. Maybe we instinctively pick similar numbers, but if we fight our instincts we end up with something truly random.
Alternating and advancing from both ends seems to work, it calls n-1, and n+1 correctly if the previous guess was n, but got no calls in a sequence like - 1, 8, 3, 7, 4, 7, 1, 7, 3, 8, etc
The house called 19 of your 190 scored numbers and only 2 people were more random than me.... Hmmm
I guess I've skewed the totals a little, but the site agrees that the digits of π are random.
https://xkcd.com/1210/
I always thought I was random, but now it's conclusive!
Haha I was thinking of the Dilbert RNG strip when I made this
https://imgur.com/a/0azWegW
I got to 2/30 then it just guessed 7 from 30-50.
Did I break it?
Yup! Most of the way I put the system together was by having it build several n-gram Markov models of your numerical sequences on the fly.
But we also have a couple of predictors that aren’t markov chains and are based on simpler heuristics. Without seeing your record, I'm guessing that the "numerical avoider" predictor got overweighted and just kept trying to guess the same number.
It should be fixed now!
Similar idea: https://aaronsonoracle.com/
I just pretended I'm playing piano to a megamix of tracks which popped into my head and did 'well'. Only 2 people more random. Typing though, think the site said that's "easier to win" on. Cba to speak 200 numbers out loud :/
Thanks, btw, actually enjoyed that. :)
Haha, that’s great. Yeah, I totally get what you mean about speaking out loud.
You only really need to vocalize about ~40 numbers total, but you can actually get a similar level of RNG by "subvocalizing the numbers" before you press them on the keypad.
The main issue is that using the keypad kind of lends itself to just pressing it randomly without really thinking about the actual numbers themselves.
"You spread your picks more evenly than a random draw would. Your most-used number made up 23% of your picks, where a random draw's busiest number gets about 23%."
??? huh?
That's an explanatory bug on my part.
I have a little "mad-lib templatized" set of sentences for reporting on various stats, and that one was supposed to be sort of related to the law of small numbers. For example, shorter runs mean there is a larger probability of getting lopsided distributions (different from pure 11%).
It's supposed to demonstrate that even though you used a single number a disproportionate number of times, it's not necessarily statistically significant since shorter RNG runs can produce the same effects.
blobrand dot com
House called 0 of 50. Huh?