Thank you for your praise on our discussion, it's fun for me as well. I don't get out much.
You hit on most of the key points of streaks when you said, "not anything that you could count on at all, or predict, or make happen."
You missed one: or prove that they exist.
To say for sure that changing machines influenced your results, one would need to be able to go back in time, not change machines and see if anything altered. And if this was possible, we'd find out that in some cases changing machines did improve results, and in other trials staying put would actually have been better. It's the nature of randomness.
Try this experiment, every half-hour stand up and loudly say, "I'm changing machines" (just stay where you are, no need to exert yourself). Then keep mental records as though you really did change machines. You'll find that the vocalization and creation of a imaginary line of demarcation in your mind, has the exact same effect as getting up and really moving.
Sometimes your "new machine" will be a lot better than your "old machine". Other times it will be just as bad or worse. Almost as though it was "random".
"We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living."
— Stephen King
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Valerie Pollard" <vpollard@...> wrote: Frank, But I'm curious as to your response regarding "streaks" that appear due to randomness....and the fact that you *could* happenstance upon a happier streak on another machine, possibly. This is something I see as a factual possibility - though only that and as I said before, not anything that you could count on at all, or predict, or make happen.
