I’m considering setting up a web survey for just that. It wouldnt be a simple forum poll as I would want to know sex, age and a few other things in addition to pocket change.
Yes, I understood that she meant the grocery store. My point was that the change in her pocket got there somehow and was accumulated as the result of various transactions which may have some mathematical distribution.
Or maybe she just randomly grabs a handful of change off of the bureau in the morning. I don’t know.
That brings up an obvious question for Hilarity. Where did the change you had that day come from? On the second encounter, where did the change both you and your friend had come from? (You probably don’t know the answer for your friend.)
I like this. You should probably restrict it to the U.S. and you definitely should include their state because of different sales taxes.
I think some cities have sales taxes also. Maybe you should just ask them for the total sales tax where they live.
My suspicion is that the amounts won’t be totally random. Some amounts will occur more often than others. Obviously, more people will have 2 cents than will have 20 dollars. But I think even looking at just small amounts there will be some kind of pattern.
However I don’t think anything will be so likely as to allow three correct guesses like in the OP.
Re the idea that pocket change will be completely random, check out Benford’s Law.
I’m not saying that this comes into play in this woman’s guessing game, but it does seem to indicate that pocket change may not be totally random however it is obtained.
They don’t need to count it after they gave you the change.
The clerk was told by the machine how much to give back to you before they gave it back to you that’s how they know how much change they gave you.
Tahssa, **Renee **is saying there’s no way for the clerk to count the total change you have with you, not the change they *just gave *you. If you’d stop to think for a second you’d realize that they’d know the latter, even if they’re using one of the automatic dispensers, because it shows up on their till.
My guess is the beggar has no idea how much change ‘you’ have, nor does she have any system to find out.
She plays the ‘game’ so your change is out right in front of her, making it more likely you will give it to her. (oh, you were so close! Here you go!)
She may guess right occasionally, but that’s not the point.
Thought some more about it, the beggar “may” have gotten lucky or we’re not hearing this right.
Perhaps the beggar says 27 cents. You have 54 cents. Well she was right you did have 27 cents so she expects to get that.
I remember a similar game where they asked you to name a country in Europe starting with “D”, an animal starting with “E”, etc. 99% of the time there was only one common answer that springs to mind - Denmark, Elephant,…
Darren Brown does the classic mentalist trick of getting one wrong so that you don’t think it’s too perfect, and dismiss obvious solutions (such as not obeying his “No actors” prohibition.)
I agree. They get absolutely no respect for doing it, especially at SDMB. “I know but I wont tell.”, well, I guess the fight against ignorance goes on, but we cant expect their help.
This is a dumb game. There’s only four countries in the world–Djibouti, Denmark, Dominica, and Dominican Republic, and only Denmark is in Europe–that can fit this. Might as well say, pick a number (integer) between 1 and 3. Is it 2?
Various people have raised various questions, such as, what was the exact wording the beggar used, and where did the change come from.
I understand the potential importance of the exact wording used, and the problem is that I can’t exactly remember. I know that in one instance it was more like, “I’ll bet you the amount of change in your pocket that it’s 83 cents,” and in the other instance it was more like, “If you have exactly 27 cents, will you give it to me.” But the end result was that she appeared to have guessed how much change I had in my change purse on two occasions, and how much my friend had on one occasion.
In the first instance, I had not performed any kind of cash transaction just prior to my contact with the lady beggar. In the second, my friend and I had gone into the coffee shop and when we were approached by the beggar we were sitting outside the coffee shop. But I don’t remember if we’d paid for our drinks with cash, and I have no idea where the change in my purse had come from, since at any given time I might have a bunch of change, and there are almost always some pennies.
At no point in either encounter was there any writing down of anything. And the beggar really couldn’t estimate how much change we might have had by the weight or bulges of our coin purses because those were buried in the depths of our handbags. She couldn’t have checked mine out the first time because I was in my car.
Now my memory is as reliable as anyone’s, which is to say, not infallible, so I checked with my friend about how she remembered it. According to her it went down like this: The woman walked up, said she needed an odd amount–under a dollar, but not an even denomination like a quarter–if we had it, and when we put our odd change together we had exactly that amount. My friend is the sort who knows to a penny how much cash she has on her, while I’m more vague, I have a general idea but I have family members who might have taken all my ones and fives and given me a $20 (or not). She thought it was a great coincidence that we happened to have exactly the amount the woman asked for, and then I told her about the previous encounter, when she’d also asked for an exact amount and gotten it. So instead of three times, I guess this just counts as two.
Obviously, I could have missed or forgotten the most important thing!
She guessed your amount the first time with you. Your friend felt sorry for her and took out just enough change to add to yours to get the right amount. So the beggar lady only guessed right once. I explained how it all works back in post #38. Magician’s patter is designed to make people believe they’ve seen something more complex than what actually happened. In this case, I’d guess the beggar lady is just crazy, and you’ve talked yourself into believing something more happened that actually did.
Your explanation was probably right, but my friend did not take out just enough change to add to mine, nor did I take out just enough to add to hers–because this wouldn’t impress anybody. So, she guessed right twice. Out of two.
I asked my son if this was the trick, and, since he remembered it involving a folded sheet of paper, here’s how I did it:
I said, "Maybe this is the trick. I will guess your word before you write it on the board. [I write BLACK, upside down, on the top third of the paper. “Name a kind of animal.”
He writes, PLATYPUS. While he does so I turn the paper around so the top is now the bottom.
“Name a city.” He writes OMSK on the board, and I write PLATYPUS in the top third of the paper and fold it.
“Okay, Black or White?” He writes BLACK on the board. I write OMSK in the middle section.
Ta da! I then unfold the paper, and there are the answers, top to bottom.
He said yeah, that was probably the trick. He had remembered it as being much more mysterious.
I strongly suspect this is true.
There could be other explanations for the either of the two correct guesses, besides pure luck. But it’s not a manipulation like the 3 questions trick, or a mathemagic type trick either. We can fool ourselves easily. Now if you go back, and pay close attention to everything you and she does, and she gets it right again, I’ll have to send her the change in my pocket. Which I bet is exactly how much change you have on you right now. Tell me how much you have and I’ll let you know if I was right.
BTW: The 3 questions trick is one of many tricks where people don’t realize they are giving you the answer to a question. This method was carried out to an extreme when Derren Brown, a magician (the other things he calls himself are part of the trick), challenged 9 highly ranked chess players including 2 grandmasters, to 9 simultaneous chess games. He won 4 games, lost 3, and played 2 to a draw. He won the games with both grandmasters.
Given the extra information provided by Hilarity, I’m relatively certain that this was 2 lucky guesses, possibly with the odds improved somewhat by some basic mathematical reasoning.
It sounds like the change available really was totally random, as opposed to being solely the result of a recent transaction. However, the distribution of possible values in a random handful of change is not even.
Think about it. Talking in terms of cents, the values 1 through 4 can each be achieved in only one way, by one, two three or four pennies, respectively. 5 can be achieved in two different ways, by a nickle or by five pennies. Similarly, 6 through 9 can each also be achieved in 2 ways. 10 cents can be achieved in 4 ways - ten pennies, five pennies and a nickle, two nickles, and a dime. A table could be constructed of the number of ways any value from 1 to n could be achieved.
The woman first asked for 83 cents, and then for 53 cents (31 + 22). It’s interesting that both values end in 3. It’s also interesting that they differ by 30 cents (three dimes, a quarter and a nickle, two dimes and two nickles, etc.), Is she following some rules about the likely values that may occur? I don’t know.
Just for the sheer fun of doing the math I may play around with the numbers to see how likely 83 and 53 are compared to other values.
Deutchlande, Egret.