Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 5,081
ITT let's brainstorm good ways to generate random numbers using only our brains.
So far I've come up with two approaches:
First approach
For binary / a coinflip: Think of a random word and let its parity decide the result.
Example: "elephant" = even length, therefore the generated number is 0.
Some googling suggests that this would be pretty close to 50/50.
A similar approach would be to use the middle letter (or one of them). This would require some homework to make a fair distribution, but it could be generalized beyond binary outcomes.
Second approach
For a random integer from 1 to N, come up with groups of N things to choose from. Go in a cycle, picking a random element from each group to the best of your ability.
Example, suppose you want a number from 1-3:
Pick from {red, green, blue} and if your pick is Red then that's a 1, and so on.
Then pick from {cow, pig, chicken}
Then pick from {battery, thumbtack, guitar}
etc and then once you've used all your categories, repeat the process from {1,2,3}
The groups don't have to be related things, e.g. I could have mixed colors with animals.
My theory behind this method is that maybe with enough different groups, your previous picks won't influence your next ones. You won't be avoiding clusters, nor trying too hard to include clusters or every possible subsequence. For instance, you won't be thinking, "I just picked Red, so I shouldn't pick Cow." The potential flaw is that maybe you have a bias toward the first (or middle or last) element, or a bias toward the element you like the most.
I haven't tested these out yet, but when I do I'll post results.
Thoughts? Ideas for other methods?
