Alex Bellos
speaker
186 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2014
last heard Jun 2014
Alex Bellos’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And once I think I was at the end of my tether, it was probably a long day, and I just said, well, I don't know, what's your favourite number?
And they said, ooh, 12 or ooh, 13.
And it was a talk and I can remember thinking, really?
And I said, put up your hands in the audience if you have a favourite number.
And it was over half the people put their hands up.
And so all of a sudden I thought, this is interesting.
Well, there's a classic psychology experiment which is think of a number between 1 and 10 off the top of your head and people say 7.
Actually, there's a famous trick used by magicians which is, you know, I'm going to read your mind.
Think of a number, think of a number.
It's going to be a two-digit number, two-digit number between 1 and 50.
Both odd numbers.
They're not allowed to be the same, so you can't do 11, but 13 would be OK.
And you are thinking of... 37.
Yeah, most people say 37.
Why?
Well, the psychology reasons are that certain numbers feel more random and more difficult.
So if you were asked to say, think of a number randomly between 1 and 10, and you said 1, that doesn't feel very random.
It's like the first one.
And 10 doesn't feel random.
7 feels like it's the most random because...
Showing 121–140 of 186 · page 7 of 10
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