Nearby there was a coffee shop, a liquor store, the aforementioned Safeway, a tea store, a Chinese restaurant, a One Hour Optical, a running shoe store, a stationery shop, and some guy doing windshield repair in the parking lot. No toll roads.
I agree, if the lady beggar had failed to guess correctly, I probably would have given her the change anyway. But she got it right.
However, I did count it right there in front of her. That is to say, fairly openly as I was sitting in my car and she was right outside.
Maybe she used mind control and made me think there was 83 cents.
The typical street magician trick is to match the change. They’ll say they have the same amount of change as you. You count out your change, then they reach in their pocket and pull out their own change, and it’s the same amount as yours. It’s just sleight of hand. Good magicians can even pull out their change first, and hold it in a closed fist until you have counted out your change.
It might be this trick.
A: I’m going to ask you three questions and before each question I’m going to write down your answer before you do.
________ PART 1
A: (in a way that is hidden from others, writes down “BLACK”, folds up the paper and puts it in a box)
A: What is your favorite animal?
B: writes “HORSE” or whatever. Everyone can see what is written, including person A.
________ PART 2
A: Writes, in secret “HORSE” then folds up the paper and puts it into the box with the first paper.
A: what is your favourite country?
B: write “FRANCE” in full view of everyone.
________ PART 3
A: Writes, in secret “FRANCE” then folds up the paper and puts it into the box with the other papers.
A: Do you like Black, or White?
B: writes down “BLACK” (50% chance of getting this right) iin full view of everyone.
B: Upends the box and unfolds all three papers - they say HORSE, FRANCE and BLACK . voila.
But I don’t know how the beggar is doing it…
Maybe. But we are missing a critical piece of information: how often she is wrong. That she hit 3 bulls eyes with you is pretty incredible, but its not out of the realm of impossibility.
Your perception is colored by the fact that it happened three times to you, but look at it from her point of view: It just happened three times. And only twice in a row when we consider your friend as it happening to you. Other people were asked between your first encounter and second, right? You also borrowed your friends experience as your own.
Next you have to consider coin flipping. If you get 3 heads in a row, are you due for a tail? No, the chance is exactly 50/50 that the next one will be a head as well. Her prior success with you does not diminish her future attempts.
So lets say there is a 1/500 chance that she can guess correctly. Can she take any actions to improve that?
Certainly. Someone said she cant a prodigy if shes a beggar, but thats not true. Its also a mistake to assume she has no education. She could very well be versed in statistics, and all she has to do is form a rough idea of where the bell curve is for pocket change. Its probably no harder than counting cards at blackjack.
I wouldnt be surprised if she has it refined to under 1 in 20. It seems logical that you might need different spreads for men and women, but thats no biggy.
That actually sounds like an interesting experiment.
Excellent reasoning, but if her perception of the high spot in the bell curve spans both 83 and 22 cents, that’s still too broad to have been able to narrow it anywhere near 1 in 20.
Were you wearing really tight pants?
Thanks.
True about the 1/20, but one can have charted different types of individuals. I mentioned male/female and that could be broken down further. Forgetful grannies might have purses full of change while young women keep things light. First off: who will you never ask? Other beggars and poor people. Little kids. Teens. Women not carrying a purse or wallet.
Second, 1 in 20 need not be linear. There will be change combinations that dont appear very often. For example as when you gain more than 1 dollar in change your percentage of quarters is going to diminish as you use them.
Auditors use something related to assess for fraud. Its called Benfords law.
http://www.rexswain.com/benford.html
Consider 22 cents. How many ways can it be constructed?
22 pennies. (pretty unlikely)
17 pennies and one nickel.
12 pennies, one dime.
12 pennies, two nickels.(still unlikely)
7 pennies, 3 nickels (maybe)
7 pennies, one nickel and one dime(FAR more likely)
2 pennies, 2 nickels, and one dime(probably the most likely)
2 pennies, 2 dimes(pretty unlikely again)
2 pennies, 4 nickels(pretty unlikely again)
I probably missed some combo, but you can see that the odds change sharply, and the most likely combination is the most balanced.
You can kind of see where the median point is. Now what about doubling that? 44 cents with 4 pennies, 4 nickels, and 2 dimes? Unlikely: The mid point changed, didnt it? 4 pennies, 3 nickels, 1 dime and 1 quarter? Still seems off to me.
More likely though, I am betting that people rarely have exactly 44 cents on them. Shall I do a poll? 41-43 seems unlikely too, but 45 is MUCH more likely.
I tend to be a notorious change carrier. Right now I have:
4 quarters
4 dimes
2 nickels
12 pennies
total: 1.72 in change.
So my pennies are about 7% of my pocket value, but over 50% of the variety.
So what does that tell us? That in 83 cents, for example, its probably not 3 quarters, a nickel and 2 pennies. Its more likely just to be extra dime, nickels and pennies.
Most days I have a bunch of 1 and 2 dollar coins too, but I made an effort to use those. I had 2 toonies and and a loonie yesterday. I bought lunch with those and a fiver, and got back 7 cents, a nickel and 2 pennies. I also picked up a dime from the ground. I overlooked that I had so many quarters.
Yesterday I had:
2 toonies(two dollar coins)
1 loonie(a dollar)
4 quarters
3 dimes
1 nickel
10 pennies
Why? Because your chance of getting quarters in change is low, as per Benfords law. Larger valued coins are physically larger(and heavier) so you are likely to spend these.
Your shopping habits are going to influence that quite a lot too, and these can be inferred from your appearance and demeanor. You can expect that a mom buys 30 items from the supermarket and probably has small counts of change, while a 21 year old single male bought a coca cola and a bag of potato chips and has closer to a dollar with change from a 5.
Now we’re getting somewhere. I doubt she used mind control, but maybe she had you ever so slightly flustered? Especially with the oddball question coming out of left field? Especially doing it quickly, practically leaning into your car, looking all emaciated and possibly giving off a considerable pong? Would you absolutely swear in a court of law that you and your friend counted accurately all three times? Or did you do what I would do, and barely perform a quick-glance count and then hand over the loot to get out of the situation unscathed by this somewhat aggressive (my interpretation, admittedly), entirely too-confident beggar lady?
As others have suggested, she probably has learned (one way or another) the best amounts to ask, and then flusters you into doing the quick-glance count so that even if you had 81, 82, 83, 84, 85 or even more, you’d say, yup, you’re right, here it is (now please go away!)
As for street magicians who do this trick, and let you perform a slow, accurate count, I got nuthin’. Pure mindfreak.
Let’s say a total stranger comes over to you and says “Will you open your purse and count your change”? Would you do it? Of course not.
This is some scam to get you to admit you have money. It’s a scam to get you to show her where you keep your money.
As for the amounts, other than her working with the cashier inside, and using signals. I can’t see it being done. For example, I never carry any change, when I get home it goes into a tin. So if the bill is $19.34 and I give the cashier a twenty, I now have 66¢
Chances are I will not have any more change.
The most likely senerio is the OP isn’t remembering correctly. This isn’t to suggest any deception but faulty memory. People are always doing this. Magicians and fortunetellers do this, the get you to give them MUCH more information than you think you are. So it looks like a trick when in reality you gave them the answer or helped them achieve their goal
Let’s face it, would the OP have said, "Sorry you guesed 83¢ and It’s 82¢ so I’m putting the money back? Would this lead to agressive begging.
If she had said 83¢ and you counted that would the OP have said, “Wait let me look in my purse awhile longer so I can get a penny perhaps and NOT pay you”?
Probably this wouldn’t happen.
Basically this person provided you a bit of entertainment for under a buck. Pretty good deal now-a-days, and get this SHE MADE A FRIEND. Now when she see the OP again, she knows, “I can go up to him and ask for money”
I have no guesses for how your beggar did it, but this and the trick with the papers remind me of the time we had a magician at the comedy club I worked at. We were having a drink after the show and he was fiddling with a deck of cards. He fanned the cards out facing me and told me to look at the deck and choose a card in my head, but to not take it out or even touch it. I did, and then he flipped through the deck a bit before holding up the correct card.
He broke a magician’s rule and agreed to do the trick again. This time I made sure to not pick a card that was prominently visible or let my eyes give away where I was looking. The third time I didn’t even look at the deck and just thought of a random card. He still got it right every time.
I never said a word about the card I was choosing and never touched the deck. This trick has baffled me to this day.
I think it quite unlikely that any very reliable relationship exists between the exact amount of pocket change and the type of individual.
Which brings up another point: the Beggar Lady told you you have $1.72 and even though it was actually $1.62, the power of suggestion made you miscount and you remembered it as a “hit” when in fact it was not. Not saying this happened in the OP’s case, but it would be natural enough, if you were counting quickly in a parking lot.
I can only see two ways that this could work. One is pure luck (not likely), and the other is inside information. She has some way of knowing the amount of change you were just given in the store, and is counting on the fact this is the only change you have.
Or she’s an honest master pickpocket and had already rifled through your change before speaking to you. 
It certainly is possible that she just lucked onto the amounts all three times, but very unlikely. Assuming that everone, everywhere, carries between 0 and 99 cents all the time, she would have a (correct me if I’m wrong) 1/1,000,000 chance of getting it right. As the whole point of her schtick is to make a living by guessing right, she’d be far better off merely asking for spare change.
It’s a trick. I’d bet that she wins nearly 100% of the time. And having been on the inside of a lot of tricks, I’m guessing that the heart of it is ridiculously simple.
Can I ask what practical experience you have that this is the case? Or is this just something that “everybody knows”? Because in high school and college I worked a couple of jobs that involved a register, serving thousands of people, and I didn’t notice this clearly delineated pattern you speak of.
Perhaps the cashier at the shop radio transmits the amount of change he’s just given someone to the lady beggar, for a percentage of the take.
Derren Brown does this trick but even he gets it wrong sometimes.
A mate of mine said that if he guessed the *number * of coins in my pocket could he have them.
I said if you guess that then you can have both of them.
Ah its four!
In response to a couple of posters, please note this has nothing whatsoever to do with cold reading, of any kind. It is utterly impossible to name the amount of change (as described) using any kind of cold reading technique.
As to the original question, I suggest that Hilarity is mis-rembering the precise sequence of events, although of course I can’t prove it and it may be difficult for Hilarity either to know that this is the case (how can someone know they are mis-remembering something?), or to admit it.
It is far more likely that the woman proposed the bet, then wrote the amount down on a scrap of paper or something, then asked Hilarity to check the exact amount and then showed that the amount she had written down was correct. This is a standard magician’s trick. As a Member of the Inner Magic Circle there are restrictions on what I can say about how it’s done, but it is a trick and it isn’t guessing.
Here’s one method for the “write down a number” trick.