

Can you recall any instances when you saw a pattern that wasn’t really there? - robg
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/see-a-pattern-here/?hp

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neilk
I've been sick enough to be delirious before. Maybe this is because my brain
is so information-focused, but I hallucinated messages everywhere. I could
"read" messages in the weave of the blankets.

It's creepy how logical it all seemed, and yet none of it was real. I was
reflecting on how maybe this hospital has problems with theft, so they decided
to print their name into the very weave of the blanket. I thought that was a
pretty cool innovation.

When I mentioned it to the nurses as I was checking out I got only arched
eyebrows. I only figured it out a week later.

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lief79
Anyone who has ever tried to debug a random piece of software, and guessed
wrong about the cause has imagined a pattern that wasn't really there.
Especially when you are looking at sporadic concurrency bugs and other psuedo
unpredictable issues.

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yters
I've seen the wrong pattern and consequently fixed a real bug.

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kevinelliott
I certainly remember seeing shapes, figures, people, and other things in
randomness of the cracks in my ceiling when I was a child. I also remember
"seeing" patterns in the television snow on empty channels.

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eru
I used to see patterns in the black static snow your eyes project in the
darkness.

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mrtron
I think any gambler sees patterns in streaks, whether it be roulette or poker.

People see patterns in athlete's hot streaks, but really these streaks aren't
outside of statistical randomness. People think that someone on a streak
should take the next shot, but really their next shot is as likely as any
other shot.

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pmjordan
Well, that may be true for truly random processes. I don't agree with the
comment about athletes. Winning gives confidence, confidence can improve
performance.

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mrtron
Look into the research done on 'Hot hand' in professional basketball. I had a
university professor in psychology/computer learning that did some research in
that field.

Maybe in a sport like football or hockey where you can make an outstanding
physical effort confidence comes into play, but for an individual basketball
shot the evidence is strongly against hot streaks.

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jwilliams
I used to know a psychologist that talked about this. It's linked into a whole
bunch of other research such as theory-of-mind and other pieces.

Seeing patterns that aren't there is perfectly natural - because we've grown
up and been designed to expect patterns.

Most of our life is cause and effect, so when we see an effect we're naturally
inclined to extrapolate on the cause... You see a fresh kill on the savanna,
it's pretty reasonable to conclude there is a predator around... This works
really well most of the time, which is why we do it.

Of course, it doesn't always work... But it's to be expected.

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Hexstream
The cornerstone of religion!

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eru
That and the ability of small kids to absorb a great amount of information
unquestioned. They pretty much have to in order to survive.

