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We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

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Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#11

Post by runnerup »

floodle wrote: post #8
Closi wrote: post #3

> As for our initial idea to make an age-guessing game, we have guessed right 51% of the time. Pretty much what we had expected . They guessed I was 'Under 60', which I am, but over 50% of people fit into the category of under 60... so the fact they can guess this with only 50% of accuracy doesn't really feel right?

I think that's their point. Since there isn't an actual correlation, their guess is basically 50/50.

GP is saying it's even more than 50/50. Less than half of people are >60. A more extreme example would be if it guessed: "You are younger than 99 years old."

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#12

Post by jat850 »

searchableguy wrote: post #7

> Do you think the questionable response looks genuinely random and satisfies the instructions? We don’t. Could someone explain why putting sequences of same choice is invalid? Sure, a probability of having many tails continously is low but how is it not random?

This is a key point in the article. The researchers (original) did not want to throw out the data that doesn't "seem random", this group argues in favour of doing so.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#14

Post by Closi »

floodle wrote: post #8
Closi wrote: post #3

> As for our initial idea to make an age-guessing game, we have guessed right 51% of the time. Pretty much what we had expected . They guessed I was 'Under 60', which I am, but over 50% of people fit into the category of under 60... so the fact they can guess this with only 50% of accuracy doesn't really feel right?

I think that's their point. Since there isn't an actual correlation, their guess is basically 50/50.

But if their guess is 50/50, that is from a subset that is mostly under-60's, which presumably means that they have evidence for the opposite?

(i.e. there is no statement that the 51% figure is age adjusted)

I'm probably just being silly here...

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#15

Post by [deleted] »

floodle wrote: post #9
mungoman2 wrote: post #4

Hm I'm curious about the complexity measurement for the coin tosses. How does it work? There is suspicious clustering in the plot, at complexity slightly lower and higher than -1. Complexity -1 is also more sparse than seems reasonable from the shape/density of the cloud.

I'm also curious about this. Randomness doesn't actually look very random. There's a surprising number of repeated characters.

[deleted]

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#16

Post by IshKebab »

Very cool website. Kind of "someone is wrong on the internet" crazy levels of effort! Really I think you can see that there's no trend just by looking at the graph. Always be suspicious of graphs that look like they have no trend by eye but have a solid trend line superimposed.

Would be nice if they defined "complexity" somewhere. I think the sequence lengths are too short to distinguish true random number generators from poor random number generators.

In other words what kind of graph would you see if you used a real coin? Although I guess if you sample over enough people then it doesn't matter.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#17

Post by Closi »

runnerup wrote: post #11
floodle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's their point. Since there isn't an actual correlation, their guess is basically 50/50.

GP is saying it's even more than 50/50. Less than half of people are >60. A more extreme example would be if it guessed: "You are younger than 99 years old."

Yeah, 'We tried to work out the impact of age on randomness, and guessed that people were younger than 99 years old 50% of the time!"

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#18

Post by searchableguy »

jat850 wrote: post #12
searchableguy wrote: post #7

> Do you think the questionable response looks genuinely random and satisfies the instructions? We don’t. Could someone explain why putting sequences of same choice is invalid? Sure, a probability of having many tails continously is low but how is it not random?

This is a key point in the article. The researchers (original) did not want to throw out the data that doesn't "seem random", this group argues in favour of doing so.

Yeah, I read that part and I can't make sense of it. How are they deciding what is reasonably random?

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#19

Post by AnnikaL »

Closi wrote: post #3

> As for our initial idea to make an age-guessing game, we have guessed right 51% of the time. Pretty much what we had expected . They guessed I was 'Under 60', which I am, but over 50% of people fit into the category of under 60... so the fact they can guess this with only 50% of accuracy doesn't really feel right?

I also guess that the segment of the population interested in a self-described "digital publication that makes data fun" probably skews even younger than the population. FWIW I was guessed to be over 60 but am not.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#20

Post by jat850 »

searchableguy wrote: post #18
jat850 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key point in the article. The researchers (original) did not want to throw out the data that doesn't "seem random", this group argues in favour of doing so.

Yeah, I read that part and I can't make sense of it. How are they deciding what is reasonably random?

I felt the same way, for what it's worth.
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