Comments | greatblondelf: The anomalous coin-flipping experiment again....

greatblondelf

The anomalous coin-flipping experiment again....

Jul 18, 2006 22:53

Hi all ( Read more... )

Comments 10

clipdude July 19 2006, 06:33:58 UTC

Is it bad if you click the button more times than the total number of counts initially specified? I did this on accident twice. (Perhaps the button should get grayed out when you reach your specified number of counts.)

greatblondelf July 19 2006, 06:49:17 UTC

Well, it shouldn't hurt anything, but then again, it also shouldn't do anything. I'll work on it, and thanks for putting in data... :)

ariata July 19 2006, 16:41:48 UTC

Have you run it without trying to get anything in particular? What does it come up as?

I'm sure a result with an average as low as I got means something...

ariata July 19 2006, 16:43:55 UTC

Also, with 2 plusses and one minus, I think the average should be .6667, but it's coming up as .33333...

ariata July 19 2006, 17:01:08 UTC

avg is being calculated as the sum / current count value, but the sum isn't the sum of plusses, it's (sum of plusses) - (sum of minusses). Is that how you wanted it? Had assumed avg would be (sum of plusses / current count value).

greatblondelf July 19 2006, 20:11:35 UTC

Yeah, that's how I intended it. In a sense, I guess that is more confusing, since the "scores" for the results are +1 and -1, instead of 1 and 0. Possibly I could make this literally say "heads and tails" and then take the average number of heads instead.....

ariata July 19 2006, 20:38:57 UTC

Nah, if that's what you wanted, leave it. I'm just more used to the 1 and 0 thing.

(The comment has been removed)

greatblondelf July 19 2006, 20:13:24 UTC

Hey!!

I exist again, by the way, and should now be on aim sometimes. I'm often on gmail chat. Liz mentioned the cosplay idea to me, and I loved it.... :)

from Djurdjica, on another computer so not logged in anonymous August 31 2006, 09:22:31 UTC

I just tried it. I don't know if I'm deluding myself, but is it common to get a string of good results if you focus on it, but a string of bad ones if you get bummed out by the results? So if you keep gliding on the happiness of the good results and not letting the bad ones affect you emotionally, they keep getting better in general.

As I did this I entered the beginning meditation state. I also feel that any questioning of positive outcome was weakness. So the feeling of "trying to prove it" instead of just playfully poking is detrimental.

I'd be happy if you looked at my outcomes and commented. I dunno, for whatever that's worth. For the record, I never participated in this kind of experiment before nor do I think I have any abilities of this kind.

Or, even better, people could try with these guidelines and see if they get better results.

Re: from Djurdjica, on another computer so not logged in greatblondelf September 6 2006, 04:52:37 UTC

You know, it was just that issue that first got me interested in it. I had noticed that, while I didn't seem to get "good" results overall for many many tries, I did seem able to manage a good "string", by entering a meditative state (as well as I could and still be doing the test), and that this did seem pretty reproducible. I'm not sure whether it is my imagination or not (regarding that issue), but it was one of the things I wanted to test with the ability to take "shorter" tests, repeated over a longer time frame. When I get a bit of time, I'm going to go over the results so far, as well as putting myself through several sessions over a few days....

Hey, how've you been?