We are getting away from the subject, that being, how did she know how much change? I’ll give her a lucky guess once.
The point of “hadn’t been into the Safeway yet” was a bit misleading to some. I should not have added the “yet” as I wasn’t going to the store that trip.
Good one, Knead to Know.
I’m going with the Asimov answer (or Occam’s Razor, if you prefer) – it never actually happened. There was no beggar and the question was just asked to see what we would try to do to come up with one.
Bzzt! Wrong!
I was kind of amazed the first time. The second time? I was astounded.
Now, I mentioned this at home. One of my kids said that in high school they had someone who, in a class, did a thing where he’d have you write down three words on a sheet of paper. He’s a little hazy on the details, but something like: Write the first word, fold the paper down, write the second word, fold the paper down. The person doing the trick also wrote down three words. Then they turned and showed their words to the class. Same words.
The girl in question did this trick a few times with different people, always getting the right answers. Then another kid in the class saw the trick, so he tried it with someone who hadn’t yet done it, and he got it right.
Related?
Because I don’t see how either one was done, but they seem kind of close to me. That is to say, it’s gotta be a trick. I’d just like to know how they’re doing it.
Oh, and you “count the change” people are way off. I swipe. (The card, I mean–not the merchandise.)
It’s less than 1 in 100 chance - because many people have more than $1 in change.
Are all combinations of change equally likely? I honestly don’t know. If they’re not, that would reduce the odds.
This has something to do with the likely change left after a purchase, keeping in mind that most people just hand over a full dollar amount rather than including change when they buy something. Hilarity, is there a sales tax where you live? If so, how much.
On edit: Based on the .82 figure I’d say that, given that most prices end in .99, you have a sales tax of 18%. But I’m not sure how that could give the .22 and .31 figures.
There could be a strong element of cold reading going on; practice would reveal how most types of people react to the proposition, which also relates to their understanding (however imperfect) of just how much loose change they’re carrying. Too much change, and the mark will be reluctant to accept the bet; a cheapskate or person hostile to the beggar might gleefully agree if holding only a tiny amount. (Conversely, an affluent liberal might feel guilty agreeing to it if holding very little, but decide even while agreeing that if the beggar is right, he or she will give a bit more anyway.)
So that could help narrow it down somewhat, but I don’t buy the idea that change tends to cluster in certain more-common quantities. Our transactions are pretty random, after all, in spite of many prices themselves terminating in .99, say. The beggar could probably guess right as often with “three cents” as “83 cents,” but the $.03 isn’t worth bargaining over. (Kind of like playing a lottery only when the jackpot hits a certain large threshold; why bother to play it when it’s 20 million, if the odds are the same dismal chance as when it’s 250 million?)
I bet the beggar is discouraged when a person agrees rather readily; it probably indicates they’ve got 75 cents or less.
I’ve seen a street magician do this trick. I don’t know how it was done, but if you google it, you’ll find a bunch of magic sites offering to sell the method.
Why would 3 cents be as likely as 83 cents?
I live in Pennsylvania where the sales tax is 6%. Many prices end in .99. The sales tax charts round up so that the tax on both .99 and 1.00 is 6 cents. Given the .99 ending of many prices, this leads to total costs ending in .05. So it seems reasonable to say that it’s more likely that I would have 0.95 than, for example, 0.94 or 0.96 in my pocket.
Okay, thinking some more I realize that the number of purchases is important. For example, 2 items. ending in .99 would give a total ending in .98.
Given that Safeway is a grocery store, it’s likely that people are purchasing more than two or three items.
However, most people pay for their weekly trip to the supermarket with a card, so they have no change from the transaction. So the change in their pocket is likely from a relatively small purchase.
So if we were to figure the spread of price endings for purchases of say 1, 2, 3, or 4 items ending in typical prices like .99 and .95 and figuring in the sales tax we might find that the amounts mentioned in the OP are more likely than other amounts.
In most cases where people report that an astounding trick seems to them to have been performed, they have left out small but significant details. I don’t intend this as a criticism, it’s just the way our minds work (mine included). I don’t think we are going to crack this without more detail.
Hilarity, did she say she was guessing the total amount or the ending amount of the change? In other words, would “83 cents” have been a correct guess if you had $1.83 or $2.83 in change?
Okay, some further reflections, for what they’re worth (say, two cents?):
the quantity of coinage will vary tremendously, on average, by gender. Men often dump their coins in their pockets and empty them out when they get home; women tend to neatly deposit their change in the purse part of their wallet, where it collects/gets spent from day to day. Huge difference.
I wouldn’t get too nitpicky over the transactional math and sales tax; around here (New Jersey), store clerks often round up anyway, so you get 95 cents back instead of 94, say (handling a nickel instead of four pennies).
I dunno about you, but I’m as good at spending most coins as I am about collecting them. Quarters especially, and I don’t use vending machines much, but a lot of people do. Also figure in tolls (not everyone uses EZ pass), laundromats, etc. So I often have scant change, like a nickel and several pennies (pennies are hard to get rid of; they tend to hang around like… a bad penny).
I think several things are going on here. What are the win conditions for the beggar?
First, the mark is going to count change privately. The beggar is not going to get more than they ask for.
If you have five in change, you are going to feel smart for fooling the beggar(unless you are one of those that will give them all of it anyway).
So 83 cents? Win. 5 bucks? Win.
What if the beggar fails to guess? Chances are pretty good that the person will give it to them anyway.
A true lose is when the person says “I only have 15 cents”. Big deal. And I bet they ask for that anyway. If you didnt just give it to them.
So it boils down to picking a number out of their ass depending on their perception of your generosity.
Scrivener. We’re working the odds here. Sure sales clerks round up or down, and sure people drop their pennies in those little dishes, but unless there’s some huge detail missing from the story, it seems like part of the answer must have to do with certain amounts being more likely than others. The rounding and the penny dishes would simply figure into those odds.
I’m not, by the way, saying that some woman who drinks stuff out of discarded cups in parking lots is some math prodigy. She may have learned the trick from someone else and simply knows the amounts to guess.
I wonder if there is a toll road or bridge nearby with a toll that ends in .17. Maybe there are other things nearby that would also explain a prevalence of .31 and .22.
Sure, we could hypothesize that the whole scam is based on the idea that once the money is out of the pocket it’s more likely that the mark will part with it. That makes sense as a scam, but it doesn’t explain the 3 lucky guesses claimed in the OP.
Hilarity, she didn’t have you do some math trick involving the amount of change did she?
The beggar lady is apparently doing this all day in the parking lot. She doesn’t need to compute what the most common amounts of change are, just remember which numbers come up more often. She could do this 100 times a day. And if there’s no discernable pattern, it doesn’t matter, she has nothing to lose, and people probably give her the change anyway once they have it out.
If the there isn’t some important detail left out of the OP, the correct amounts would be nothing more than lucky guesses, possibly with luck enhanced by knowing typical amounts of change people have in that parking lot.
TriPolar,
I like that explanation.
She didn’t have me do any math trick. She only said if she could guess how much I had in change, would I give it to her, and barely gave me time to nod before she said the amount.
But when I was with my friend she phrased it a bit differently.
I may indeed be leaving out something important. I tend to remember odd things, like her taking the drink from the discarded cup (but then, it could have been her cup, that she left there earlier…who knows?)
If it was cold reading, she did a good job, both times. If it was a guess, again, I think that’s pretty lucky to get it three times (twice with me, once with my friend). Could be she misses a lot.
But if street magicians do this, I’m really curious. I’m probably not curious enough to buy the trick, though. Unless it costs exactly 17 cents.