Sure, but if you had the woman in front of you, and you then hit $.83, would you have kept looking for those dimes?
Why are things always in the last place you look?
-Joe
Whenever I look for something, I look in one more place after I find it, just to prove that false.
I think that was, you know, the point.
Hopefully this poll will provide some more info. At least it should reject (or perhaps corroborate) the hypotheses that some amounts of change are so much more likely than others, that it figures into the trick.
I predict that amounts involving 3 pennies (.03, .08, .13, etc.) will be more likely, but not enough to make a profitable trick out of it.
It looks like zero and “$1 or greater” are winning out.
This could be a variety of the one ahead trick. get ten people to put a message in separate envelopes. Put the first one to your head and announce the message - open and ask the ten if it matched any of their messages. repeat for all ten
The trick is that you have one confederate for which you know the message (and you make sure his envelope is last). You take some else’s envelope, announce your confederates message, and then open and read the message inside, which you give for the second envelope and so on.
Yes, but even if we discard all the zero’s (which there’s a good argument for - first, it’s pointless for a beggar to guess zero because even if she’s right she loses, second, because many people said in the comments they were in gym shorts or otherwise pocketless and they had change in their cars), I think we can safely reject the hypothesis that 83 cents, 31 cents, or 21 cents are just common amounts of change people have.
Don’t you guys get it yet? The beggar lady wins every time someone feels sorry for her and gives her their change. The part about guessing the amount is just a means to get people to take out their money. If she guesses right occasionally, its just luck. She might notice some more common amounts of change that win the bet, but the numbers she uses are more likely associated with people’s willingness to give up the money than the guessing the right amount. There is no way to significantly increase the chances of a correct guess based on the OPs description of the events.
If only someone else had suggested this incredibly original theory somewhere else in the thread.
That may very well be the case. Hilarity reports that in her personal experience, though, the woman is 3 for 3. It’s interesting to consider if, and how, she is more accurate than random guessing.
You could increase the odds considerably in the case of the coffee shop, where she may have noted what they were drinking and knew the costs of those drinks.
That is not even correct. Hilarity claims no more than 2 for 2 if you read the whole thread. And I question the accuracy of the second guess. On top of that Hilarity admits not having a precise recollection of the events.
And on these boards anecdotes count for SO much.
Actually, we don’t know where she stands. All we know is she’s at least 2 for something (presuming HNS’s recollection is correct), and that something is almost certainly larger than 2. If she runs this scam on a regular basis, it could be 2 out of 300 or something like that rather than 2 for 2.
We know Hilarity stands at 2 for 2. The beggar lady maybe anything from 0 for 2, to who knows, or cares what. She’s came out ahead from Hilarity and her friend. And probably others as well, and she doesn’t have to guess right once to make it work.