Psych! There are no interesting articles about psychics in this thread (none posted by me anyway...) Instead I want to gather data on what random numbers people pick so as to get more girls. Cookie to whovever gets the reference. 
Well, my approach to this problem is that '
everyone' picks 7 from a choice of 1..10, and threes and sevens feature highly on larger choices. And odd numbers in general seem to be more popular than even numbers (as a geek I also know there's an afinity for 2
n numbers but will often go for the 2
n-1 neighbour), with primes being favoured by people who are into that thing. Squares, cubes and similar maybe also for the matehmatically inclined, as well as numbers like 6 and 28 (prefect numbers, the sum of their factors equalling themselves, and its a pity the latter is just a tad out of range). 11 and 22 with their repetitions might appeal to some (for their repetition) whereas 10 and 20 might appeal to others (zero as the units might be considered less likely to be picked by those not thinking about things). 12 and 24 relate to convenient lengths of time, and how could we forget unity? 14, as both the double of 7 and the integer percentage of 1/7th is interesting and 18 can often relate to a coming of age (assuming 21 isn't more significant).
On the whole, if I wanted to avoid a popular number, it'd be difficult. I might go for the number 2, but I might also be rather put off by a lass who is always thinking of the number 2. They could be considered obsessive in some circles. Or perfect in others?
(In reality, I would probably have gone for 27, if that was within range, as one element of my birthday. 7 is another element. Both of these have unfortunate clashes with my eagerness to shy away from the "obvious" ones, but defuinitely the latter.)
While the above summary is a little rushed, and assumes far more mathematical knowledge than the general public (who would probably use things like door or telephone numbers as inspiration, if trying to think up a random number) it's the kind of thing I remember discussed when the UK Lottery started up. After all, with an equal chance of all number combinations coming up, your only real skill would be to choose numbers that no-one else would chose, so that
should you win big (i.e. the non-fixed prizes) you're less likely to be sharing the jackpot for that combination, and thus better off. (Apparently 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 was a surprisingly popular combination amongst those that realised it was purely chance, but obviously didn't grasp the concept of the likelihood of sharing on any such win, unless they were assuming that everyone else would stay shy of it for that reason... etc.) For that reason, my choice of lotto numbers would bias most against numbers within the range 1..12 and slightly against 1..31 (though not avoid them completely) to ensure as little synchronicity with 'birthdate-playing' as possible. Plus some other restrictions (avoiding common multiples, or successive primes/fibinacci numbers/etc) to catch those playing a mathematically-inspired system. I'm unsure whether avoiding or gravitating to past winning combinations would be an element (do more people consider them "lucky and still likely" or just "spent" and not likely to arise any more?) so I'd probably ignore that and hope for the best.
I also tried to set up an experiment, at the time when the National Lottery first started, whereby 'entrants' to a pseudo-lottery would specify one random number per entry and whichever number (or numbers, in thr case of a draw) that had the least (non-zero) entries associated with it would be the winning number(s), the 'game money' proceeds being split equally amongst all who contributed that number. (An undivisible remainder 'rolling over' to the next game.) The factor of diminishing returns was supposed to discourage people from spread-betting across the whole number range, in order to get a share in whichever number ended up being the winner, although that assumed that there were sufficient people not spread-betting to that degree, and it still gave an advantage. (Solutions such as not allowing all-digit spreads were suggested, as well as penalties (e.g. loss of whole or fractional shares) for those that has 'played' the most commonly chosen number as well as the least.) It was very much an attempt to see (over the series of such games) whether tactics would evolve to avoid the 'obvious' choices, or even for some to positively choose them
because others were migrating away, leaving 'easy wins'...
Other factors stymied that particular experiment, though.
Anyway, I'll thinks some more, than vote, I think. I just don't want to go for the 'obvious', even for unrelated reasons. Psychologically it would feel wrong.
(Edited for manual detagging being typoed.)
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Topic: Fake psychic statistics (Read 4820 times)