On Being Random
Feb 21st, 2008 by brianschettler
I read this article a while ago but just found it again when discussion a brain teaser with Jon. One of my favorite parts:
Our brains are so hardwired to see patterns, it’s devilishly hard for most of us to generate random behavior.
Indeed, take a minute and try to write down a random sequence of 200 heads or tails. If you actually flip a coin that many times, there’s a very large chance (98%) that there will be a run of at least 6 heads or 6 tails in a row. But very few people can bring themselves to produce such runs in trying to be random. Your iPod’s shuffle function isn’t broken when it plays songs from the same artist two or three times in a row. By chance, runs do happen.