talkmagic.co.uk

IAIN wrote:

John McDonald wrote:

IAIN wrote:surely there's just as much chance as people all writing 1s and 3s as any other number though? and doing it via automatic writing, those are probably the easiest numbers to draw...

It does not matter what they write. The fact they do not know and have a free choice sells the idea to them. They have been conditioned several times and Derren just does this last one on the pretext that noone else should put the numbers on.

I'm not talking about the "real" method - I'm just saying that the chances of any person writing 1 or 3 down is just as likely to happen as any other number, and, via automatic writing - i.e. people with eyes shut and letting the pencil do the writing, 1 and 3 are in fact, very liable to be drawn..as they very comfortable shapes for a hand to make...

Sorry Ian I am not sure what your point is then? Do you mean if this was used in a different effect? 6 could be popular or even 7.....or.......

its ok - its not important, just being pedantic!

Iain - did you read my other post?

Yes, obviously there's as much chance of one person writing a 1 or 3 as any other but the chances of a 2 being the average of 24 people's choices is much, much slimmer than a higher number as there are lots of combinations that could average out at a higher number and not many for a lower one.

Final chance at explaining:

If you rolled 5 dice, for each individual die a 1 is as likely as anything else but to get an *average* of 1 you would need to roll five 1s only. To get an average of, say, 4 however you could roll 3 4 4 4 5 or 2 3 4 5 3 or 1 6 3 4 3 etc. - there are abolsutely tons of combinations that would average at four, but only one that would average at 1.

Sorry to harp on but it's a mathematical fact that 2 is a very unlikely outcome from an average of 24 selections (each potentially going up to 49!) compared to higher numbers.

What was my original point? Oh as if he used their numbers anyway! I'm a split-screen boy.

Entertaining post here from Jack of Kent on Derren's legal reasons.

Interestingly, the only way he would genuinely have a legal necessity not to show the numbers ahead of the BBC would be if the draw had taken place earlier and Camelot had provided him with the results. Without that, as JoK suggests, it's just a bloke reading out his chosen lottery numbers.

TimEden wrote:

Another point from YouTube:
One of the numbers was 2. If he'd taken the average of the 24 numpties then they would all have had to put 1 or 3 for that number. Pretty unlikely, really.

Those aren't the only possibilities.
If 12 people guess 1, 12 people guess 3 then total is 48 so average = 48 / 24 = 2.
If 12 people guess 1, 11 people guess 3 and 1 person guesses 4 then total is 49 so average = 49 / 24 = 2.041
How do you represent that on a lottery ball? Presumably you take the integer part, ie 2 so there's a third possibility. And there will be others too.

I'm not sure why I'm debating this as I agree with most that Derren's explanation was not the method used

On another site someone mentioned maybe the guy who got singled out for "having trouble with automatic writing" and did the calculations for the group could be a plant to entice the group into thinking they were getting some of the numbers correct.

Oh alright the odd 4 wouldn't affect it fair enough (as in my dice example - some added up to 17 so the average was actually 4.25) but you get the general point.

Yes I thought the guy who added up had to be a plant.

On a lighter note, this made me chuckle (don't think this one has been on here yet?)

"Unseen Derren Brown Lottery secret revealed"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rHPh5Xanss&feature=fvsr

did you not read mine?

we have to take into account the automatic writing, you're not!

go try it now...you can get a lot of 1s and 3s out of automatic writing...

I'm sure your maths is sound, however you're not seeing the whole picture of this fake explanation

Anthony Owen comes to mind when I see Lottery predictions like Blaine's.......now doesn't he work closely with......

Blaine's lottery prediction was better than Derren's

its very easy to do a lottery prediction...lots of methods too...

from the very expensive, to the ultra lo-tech, I'm tempted to cash in for a laugh and release a quick ebook for the different presentations i can think of...

i wont, but it would be amusing to do one...obviously, despite a lot of people being befuddled by or simply not liking derren's approach - its now the latest hot thing to do...but most wont understand the implications of a lottery prediction...

MasterCyde wrote:Blaine's lottery prediction was better than Derren's

It wasn't Blaines.....AO

i like the fact derren keeps emphasising the "if I'm not in jail by now..." thing, and he kept that part of the possibility til last (its usually the thing people remember the easiest too) - and the online poll supports that...

i still say alot of your will be eating humble pie come the end of the series y'know...

TimEden wrote:No, Iain:

Without getting bogged down in the maths, because we're looking at *averages* not specific numbers, the group hitting 2 *is* very unlikely. I know that with specific numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 coming out of the machine is as likely as anything else but here's my point:

For the group to get an average of say, 23, there are *lots* of combinations the group could have come up with that would have averaged at 23 but to average at 2 they would all have to put 1s and 3s (and a pretty even share of each).

Other explanation: Say you did it with just 2 people, to get an average of say 12, the two people could have put 1/23, 2/22, 3/21, 4/20, 5/21 etc. Basically anything that adds up to 24 (leading to an average of 12). But to get an average of 2 they would *have* to have chosen 1/3.

Hence getting two as an average from 24 people is *not* as likely as the next number.

Ta-daa! And, yes, I did get bogged down in maths!!

Not defending the method as the real explanation, but if my memory serves then didn't they get the numbers from the automatic writing exercise where he stated they would write down anything - even negative numbers? If so then they didn't all have to come up with 1 or 3. In fact they didn't have to be just 1s and 3s anyway for the averaging to work out. The average of 1 + 1 + 1 + 5 is 2.

Go on then, someone explain the coin trick to me as I am stupid....
A PM would be fine or a nice simple link.

Thanks in advance

FRK