Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

pudding.cool

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 361 posts

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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

simias wrote: post #135
denton-scratch wrote: post #130

> so that if another person is shown your sequence of digits from 1 to 6, he/she should not be able to tell whether these numbers were produced by a real die or just “made up” by somebody. That instruction is a flaw in the experiment. It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. > t…

>It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. If the sequence is long enough you can model how likely it is to have been produced by a fair die. Are all numbers equally distributed? Are some numbers more likely to follow or not follow other numbers? Are some patterns repeating? Of course any sequence can be produced by a fair die, but you can still create some objecti…

[deleted]

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

#142

Post by sp332 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #140
simias wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. If the sequence is long enough you can model how likely it is to have been produced by a fair die. Are all numbers equally distributed? Are some numbers more likely to follow or not follow other numbers? Are some patterns repeating? Of course any sequence can be produced by a fair die, but you can still create some objecti…

Any single sequence of numbers has the exact same probability of being produced by a fair die (that's how the definition of "fair" goes). The probability of getting all 6 is the same of any other one you get.

That's true given that we have a fair die. But the question is, given some results, what is the probability that the die is fair? And there are statistical tools for that.

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

#143

Post by ahwvd37js »

From the original paper [1].

> Paradoxically, participants with a scientific background may perform worse at producing random sequences, thanks to a common belief among them that the occurrence of any string is as statistically likely as any other (a bias deriving from their knowledge of classical probability theory), which further justifies controlling for Field of education, simplified as humanities v. science.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...

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

#144

Post by mxkopy »

marcosdumay wrote: post #140
simias wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. If the sequence is long enough you can model how likely it is to have been produced by a fair die. Are all numbers equally distributed? Are some numbers more likely to follow or not follow other numbers? Are some patterns repeating? Of course any sequence can be produced by a fair die, but you can still create some objecti…

Any single sequence of numbers has the exact same probability of being produced by a fair die (that's how the definition of "fair" goes). The probability of getting all 6 is the same of any other one you get.

The probability of a specific sequence occurring is different from the probability of a specific sequence being random.

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

#146

Post by graderjs »

denton-scratch wrote: post #130

> so that if another person is shown your sequence of digits from 1 to 6, he/she should not be able to tell whether these numbers were produced by a real die or just “made up” by somebody. That instruction is a flaw in the experiment. It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. > t…

Too deep topic and maybe I don't understand it compared to the megaminds here on hacker News but as far as I get it when it comes to randomness every sequence has the same probability which is simply the inverse of the number of sequences for any given length.

In that case it seems to me impossible to tell from only the information of a single sequence.

But if you have multiple sequences where one is the binary coding of a Mozart symphony and another is the binary encoding of Shakespeare sonnet and another is the binary encoding of days of the week or a DNA sequence if you have enough data points like that I think you can start to say Well they're probably not random because we see coherent patterns.

The second aspect is coherent pattern depends on perspective. So what seems random to us maybe a very common physical constant to an alien civilization. so if we see a binary sequence that represents pi, maybe we say oh well that's not random because it's accurately pi to like a thousand places... but if we see another sequence that looks random maybe it's a physical constant to an alien civilization that's accurate to a thousand places as well. But we don't know that so it looks random...to us. So randomness doesn't just depend on entropy, I think in a realistic point of view, probability is not enough, it also depends on something which Maybe it's a little bit harder to measure perhaps which is perspective. Random depends on the context.

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

#147

Post by natly »

ahwvd37js wrote: post #143

From the original paper [1]. > Paradoxically, participants with a scientific background may perform worse at producing random sequences, thanks to a common belief among them that the occurrence of any string is as statistically likely as any other (a bias deriving from their knowledge of classical probability theory), which further justifies controlling for Field of education, simplified as humanities v. science. [1]…

How in the world did this get through peer review

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

#148

Post by jeremyjh »

quanto wrote: post #38

Beautifully crafted web page. For any experimental science, the integrity of experiment (thus reliability of data) is important. For experiments with human subjects, the question is whether the subjects answered the questions in good faith. A sequence like 'HHHHHHHHHH' for the coin toss experiment looks like an answer in bad faith; it is mechanically easy to keep pressing the same button, and a subject is unlikely to…

It’s hard to believe the original authors made their argument in good faith. They probably ran the numbers with the filters and saw they wouldn’t have a paper that way.

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

#150

Post by HWR_14 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #130

> so that if another person is shown your sequence of digits from 1 to 6, he/she should not be able to tell whether these numbers were produced by a real die or just “made up” by somebody. That instruction is a flaw in the experiment. It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. > t…

> It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible.

That's just not true.

Or feel free to play a game with me. We'll roll a 20 sided die. If it comes up 20, you give me a ten. If it comes up any other number, I'll get you a dollar. Nice EV on that!

Oh, the die has come up 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20 the last seven times. Do you play?

Post reply on HN