I went with 6 because 7 is really popular in these things, and I figured 6 would need to be larger to make up for that.
We’re doing pretty well, although my contribution didn’t help (9).
I went with 8, figuring the middle was solid and 1 and 9 would be over-represented. Why 8 and not 2? Um, why not?
Exact same reasoning I used, but I chose 2 instead of 8.
I picked 9 just to be a dick and ruin the results.
This was my thinking, but I was torn between 5 and 6. I went for 5 because I thought more people would go for 6. Seems I was wrong.
Interesting distribution right now:
1 4 3.88%
2 5 4.85%
3 11 10.68%
4 12 11.65%
5 31 30.10%
6 11 10.68%
7 15 14.56%
8 6 5.83%
9 8 7.77%
5 is getting the right amount of hits, but 4 and 6 are still lagging because people are either choosing 5 or hitting the outlying numbers when they shouldn’t be.
Fascinating social experiment.
I picked 6. It’s a perfect number after all!
Can the weekend crowd smooth us out?
I doubt it. This is just the sort of thing people suck at. I think that 1 is a favorite to beat 2, and I wouldn’t be shocked if 3 overtook 4.
And why was 6 scared of 7?
Because 789.
I picked 9 because I like it. Apparently 9 is quite the popular number. I wonder what would happen if you reversed the order of numbers in the original poll?
The graph is giving us a huge middle finger at the moment.
My gut feeling was 7, then I remembered that that’s a terrible way to generate a bell curve. After thinking for a moment, I figured I should probably select 4, 5 or 6. I also figured 5 may be overrepresented, and I picked 4 over 6 just 'cus. Seems I got lucky.
1 5 3.25%
2 8 5.19%
3 14 9.09%
*4* 18 11.69%
5 47 30.52%
6 19 12.34%
7 21 13.64%
8 9 5.84%
9 13 8.44%
There would be a significantly better shot at getting a real bell curve if you asked for Dopers’ heights. Not weights. Heights. (They’d be more likely to lie about weight.)
Having the objective stated in the OP and then nothing to select from but a set of 9 numbers is almost certain to fail. Folks will go out of their way to be different, especially if they know the first thing about bell curves.
Other processes that should yield a bell curve:
– hours of sleep per day
– hours of TV watching per week
– dollars spent on food per week
– number of movies watched per month
I think that’s kind of the point of the exercise.
I guess I misread the OP.
Well, the possibility of failure is what makes it a game. Asking a boring question that is basically guaranteed to give a bell curve is pretty dull.
I picked 9 because I am an anarchist and wish to disrupt your experiment.
Why so much love for 9 as opposed to 1?