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From: trc@hou5a.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Apparent Order in Random Numbers - and worse
Message-ID: <453@hou5a.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Dec-83 08:00:33 EST
Article-I.D.: hou5a.453
Posted: Fri Dec 16 08:00:33 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Dec-83 02:57:55 EST
References: <472@seismo.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 13

Seems to me that the experiment sounds biased - the subjects are *instructed*
to find an underlying order, which implies to them that the sequence *is*
a generated one.  A better experiment would have been to give them a mix
of generated and random sequences, (and of a reasonable length - IE not so
short that the subject cannot judge one way or the other - which is what
is implied by the instructions of *this* experiment) and have the subjects
sort them into "generated" and "random" sequences.  The subjects should be
informed that there is a chance that all the samples would be random or all 
would be generated.  I suspect that errors will still be made in many cases, 
but that the errors will not be biased towards "jumping-to-conclusions".

	Tom Craver
	hou5a!trc