{"id":19100,"date":"2013-02-20T10:51:55","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T15:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19100"},"modified":"2013-02-20T10:53:40","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T15:53:40","slug":"people-are-terrible-judges-of-randomness-that-is-why-we-invented-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/02\/20\/people-are-terrible-judges-of-randomness-that-is-why-we-invented-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;People are terrible judges of randomness. That is why we invented statistics&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the gaming blogs I&#8217;m quite fond of had this rather neat explanation of <a href=\"http:\/\/eggbaron.blogspot.ca\/2013\/02\/colin-johanson-on-loot-drop.html\" target=\"_blank\">why humans are so bad at detecting true random distribution<\/a> (the rest of the post discusses this in a <em>Guild Wars 2<\/em> context):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The other thing that may be a factor here is that people are terrible judges of true randomness. As an example take the following two images. Which do you think was generated by the most random process?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/muller.lbl.gov\/teaching\/physics10\/old%20physics%2010\/chapters%20(old)\/4-Randomness.htm\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Randomness1.jpg\" alt=\"Randomness1\" width=\"605\" height=\"298\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19101\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Randomness1.jpg 605w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Randomness1-150x73.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Randomness1-480x236.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It turns out that the image on the left was generated by simply placing 100 random stars with in the fixed area using a random number generator. The image on the right was generated by first dividing the entire area into 100 squares and then randomly placing a star inside each of those squares. See for yourself in the image below. No two stars are in the same box.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Randomness2.jpg\" alt=\"Randomness2\" width=\"243\" height=\"257\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19102\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Randomness2.jpg 243w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Randomness2-141x150.jpg 141w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 243px) 100vw, 243px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It is hard for a lot of people to accept that the image with the black stars is in fact generated by a more random process than the image with the blue stars. This has a lot to do with how <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Apophenia\" target=\"_blank\">the human brain is constantly looking for patterns<\/a>. When the brain sees these patterns it attempts to correlate them to a cause even if a cause does not exist. Essentially, this is the illusion of luck. It is why people can believe that they are on a &#8220;hot streak&#8221; or why they might believe an object gives them an increased chance at success. Some call this <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gambler%27s_fallacy\" target=\"_blank\">the Gambler&#8217;s fallacy<\/a>. In the end it is all the same thing. People are terrible judges of randomness. That is why we invented statistics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the gaming blogs I&#8217;m quite fond of had this rather neat explanation of why humans are so bad at detecting true random distribution (the rest of the post discusses this in a Guild Wars 2 context): The other thing that may be a factor here is that people are terrible judges of true [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,16],"tags":[746,290],"class_list":["post-19100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming","category-science","tag-gambling","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4Y4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19100"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19106,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100\/revisions\/19106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}