
Puzzle: Are You Smarter Than 6,832 Other New York Times Readers? - smu
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/13/upshot/are-you-smarter-than-other-new-york-times-readers.html
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ssivark
While I correctly analysed the situation fully before calling it, I expected
most of NYT's readers to use zero-step thinking. It turns out that they do one
better, so I guess I'm the typical NYT reader, in a sense.

General comment: As different things get "strongly" coupled to each other, one
needs to take more and more steps into account to get a reasonable answer.

The question I have is this: Is there any way to figure out how many steps the
other people in the situation will be using?

~~~
Nadya
Most people are 1-2 step thinkers. [Citation Needed] But I'll explain why I
think this:

Many people will assume nobody will think about the problem (1 step thinkers).
A few people will assume _someone_ will think about the problem who thought
about the people who won't think about the problem (2 step thinkers).

I think most 3+ step thinkers will take the problem to it's most logical
inclusion (making them n-step thinkers). Why stop arbitrarily at 3 or 4?
They've recognized that people who exist who will think other people exist who
thought about the problem. At that point they should be able to recognize that
this pattern will continue to n. While I am sure there are 3->(n-1) thinkers,
they'll be more rare than n-step thinkers, I'd reason.

There are a number of 0 step thinkers who read the question and answered 33
though.

Now I have a question: Is the person who answers 0 smarter than the people who
happened to guess the right answer at the proper point of time, even if at the
current time (and possibly indefinitely) they got the problem wrong? aka "I
only got the answer wrong because other people didn't think hard enough."

~~~
PretzelPirate
I was a 0-step thinker assuming that the majority of people doing this would
pick random numbers bringing the average to 50. I expected that on a popular
website that will likely get shared on Facebook, random would be the most
likely outcome.

I think I either underestimated how many people would share this on Facebook,
or perhaps, the audience that will go to a New York Times page is different
than the audience that will go to "Only geniuses will be able to get this..."
type quizzes. Of course, it could be that HN skewed the results in favor of a
true mathematical + predictive model.

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zafka
I played to quickly. As of 27,000 my answer of 16 was three to high. I am
guessing it will be the right answer in around 5 minutes

~~~
BoratObama
19 is the answer as of 28,800; 13 min later. So your guess might have been
right.

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rezashirazian
I figured most people will think people are picking 42 (meaning of life and
all) so they would pick 28. So to get ahead of them I picked 19.
[http://i.imgur.com/Ke1m0jp.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ke1m0jp.png)

~~~
T-hawk
Well, you were right, but not for the right reason. The distribution has
strong peaks at 33 and 22, which are one and two iterations of 2/3 multipliers
away from 50. There's no peak whatsoever at 42 or 28. You just happened to
catch the right spot between the biggest peaks, not your own peak.

(And the peak at 66 is rather disconcerting; there's no rational reason for
that choice other than innumeracy or misreading the question.)

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dragondave
Wonder how much anchoring effect there is (sample numbers are given in the
original question). I note the sample numbers are generated by javascript --
are they testing the impact of those numbers?

Also, I don't see why N-step arguments are invalid; everyone who went for the
Nash Equilibrium is wrong (the average is not 3/2 * 0); you just need to
predict how many step-thinkers people are :P

(I guessed 6, which is approx 2/3 of 2/3 of the winning answer... so
presumably I'm two steps too deep :P)

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cantrevealname
> _Many people believe that it’s better to sell a house in the spring, for
> example, because more buyers are looking then. But what really matters is
> the ratio between buyers and sellers. You’d rather sell your house when your
> town has 20 buyers and only 2 sellers than when it has 100 buyers and 500
> sellers._

That's a great observation, and I wonder if anyone has done a serious study on
the optimal season to sell a house.

~~~
dwd
You also need to consider the secretary problem
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem)
in calculating an optimal selling point.

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VikingCoder
Look at all those people who voted 67 or higher...

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rorykoehler
I was too optimistic. 16 when the answer was 19 (43,884 answers so far). This
is more a test how much faith you have in the general intelligence in our
society. People who played it to the end game nash equilibrium must think that
they are surrounded by geniuses.

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stonogo
> Your guess, while not a winner, was better than those of 95 percent of all
> readers. Take a bow.

So the answer to this headline, finally, is "yes." Eat it, Betteridge.

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RodericDay
I got the Nash consolation prize

~~~
yellowapple
As did I, though by accident.

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mrcactu5
I was one off at the time I played. Is there any actual prize for winning?

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alexjikim
is zero really the nash equlibrium? given that they seem to round decimal
numbers it seems like it should be one instead.

~~~
jeffwass
I also used the same round-up logic w/ Nash equilibrium and picked one.
Clearly over-estimating how much thought the readers have put into answering
the puzzle.

The NYT glibly informed me my choice was 'not even close'.

