Re: a ESP test (statistical problem)
- From: quasi <quasi@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 01:22:20 -0700
On Tue, 2 Aug 2005 13:01:59 +0200, "riparian"
<riparian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>A ESP test (extra sensory perception) is carried like this:
>>From a deck of cards were chosen 5 cards. These cards were seen by both the
>conductor of the experiment and a person. The cards were laid on the table
>with the back side upwards in such a way that only the conductor of the
>experiment knew the sequence of the cards. The conductor chosed a card and
>the person should then say which card it was. In a sequence of 100
>experiments the person answered correctly 37 times.
>Is there reason to believe that this person has special supernatural powers?
Well, there are some non-supernatural explanations, for example:
(1) the person ia cheating -- peeking somehow
(2) the deck is partially marked (but the experimenter is unaware
of it)
(3) the person being tested is able to get some indication as to
which card by looking at the experimenter's facial expression, in the
same way that top poker players, when playing against a novice, can
almost always tell whether the novice has a great hand or is bluffing.
There are other non-supernatural explanations, but some explanation is
needed since a score of 37 is very high.
If after each guess, the cards are reshuffled, then
the probability of getting a score of 37 out of 100 is:
C(100,37)*(1/5)^37*(4/5)^63
which equals approximately 1/27000.
Of course, if you have 27,000 monkees being tested, it wouldn't be
surprising if one of them scored that high.
quasi
.
- References:
- a ESP test (statistical problem)
- From: riparian
- a ESP test (statistical problem)
- Prev by Date: Re: Smallest Graph with Chromatic Number = 5
- Next by Date: Re: a ESP test (statistical problem)
- Previous by thread: Re: a ESP test (statistical problem)
- Next by thread: combinatorics
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
