And sometimes it refuses to see patterns based on preconceived assumptions.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/pigeons-monty-hall-problem-100304.html
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
From: nightoftheiguana2000@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 18:25:20 +0000
Subject: [vpFREE] Re: Best Randomness Analogy Contest
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Frank" <frank@...> wrote:
> I'll be awarding the "prize" to the person that comes up with the best analogy to describe randomness, and why people look for and see pasterns in it, even when they are not there.
I think you need to define what you mean by "randomness" a bit better. First off, in any set of data, there are patterns, that would be the mean, the variance, the skew, etc. That is of course statistics. Are you saying statistics is a pseudo-science? I assume you mean other than these patterns? That reason is simple, this is how the brain works, it looks for patterns. Sometimes it gets fooled (this would be magic tricks, grift, scams, casinos, etc.). Othertimes it sees a pattern which is strictly coincidence, the obvious example is seeing things in clouds.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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