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How good are you at generating random numbers? Indulge me in a little magic trick. Reach into your pocket (or purse), and pull out a coin. In a moment, I’m going to ask you to flip that coin a few times and record the order that the coin lands heads or tails. Record the results you obtain in one of the boxes below by entering a sequence of letters H and T e.g. HTHHTHT … It does not matter which box you use. I hope you’ll agree that flipping an (unbiased) coin is a pretty fair random number generator. |
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Then, I want you to put the coin away, and in the other box repeat the same exercise, but this time make-up the results. Type in data at random; as it comes into your head. Try your best to make the sequence of heads and tails as random as you think you can. (You don’t even need an enter the exact same number of flips; a few more or a few less should not matter!) |
I hope you’ll agree that you had a free choice into which side of the page you entered the coin flip data into, and which side you entered the fabricated data? Now that you’ve input the data, I’m going to attempt to read your mind. I’m going to predict which side contains the made up data, and which side contains the coin flip data.
When you are ready for the magic to happen, click the Read my Mind! button below.