Now I'll explain what the point of that was. I am conducting an experiment to see what numbers I will get if I ask a bunch of people to pick a random number between 1 and 100. It was important to me that the page be very simple so as not to influence the numbers people entered.
My guess is that there will be preference towards certain numbers over others. Whenever I try to think of a random number, I tend to lean towards 7's. I decided to also add those extra questions so that I'll be able to see if different patterns arise in, for example, males and females. Or maybe math-savvy people will generate less random numbers than non-math people because they think too hard about it. Or then again, it may spread evenly across the board, providing the most boring results possible.
Once I have a good number of submissions (I would like hundreds of thousands, but I don't think I'll get that lucky) I will gather the findings and publish them on this page. So check back here later!
You can help! Tell your friends, family, random forum people! The more numbers I get, the much more interesting the results will be. If you use Digg or Del.icio.us, please click the links below!
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I would like to take this time to address some frequently asked questions I have seen addressed to me as well as posted as comments in websites all over the Internet.
Why don't I get to see any real-time results?
I felt that providing real time results would encourage people to abuse it by going back and submitting a bunch more of their favorite number or something. Also, there are a lot of things I want to do with the data besides "what number was picked the most?" Oh, and it would also be a heavy hit on the database because I anticipate a lot of people would keep reloading the page to see the results update. I'll give you a tiny preview: There are huge trends in the data, so the results will be quite interesting, and I have over 40,000 submissions. Thanks everybody!
"I consider myself equally left- and right-brained" or "the left- and right-brain thing is a false dichotomy" or "I am offended that you imply that logic and creativity are opposites."
I thought about providing a third answer for "in the middle" or something like that, but I was afraid that too many people would choose that option. By only providing those two options, people are forced to either choose the side that they feel they learn more towards, which is what I wanted, or they could just leave the question blank.
As for it being a false dichotomy, I don't really care. Most ordinary people recognize the left- and right-brain distinction, and since this is a sociological/psychological experiment, I believe the question is valid.
And finally, I used "logic" and "creative" simply to remind people which side of the brain is which. I often forget which side is which and I figured those were good words to remind people. I know there are better and more accurate descriptions of the sides but my goal was simply to remind, not to define.
It looks like I can submit my number over and over again. Won't that skew the results?
I have many safeguards in place for preventing abuse. Who says that when you resubmit the number its actually getting entered in the database? And if I AM storing duplicate entries, that could be interesting information in and of itself.
I entered a fractional number, aren't I creative?
I am sad to say that I totally forgot to make the database support fractional numbers. If you entered a number with a decimal, everything after the decimal was simply cut off. So all of you 3.14 guys actually submitted 3. Sorry. That would have been an interesting statistic.
When will you publish the results?
As long as submissions are coming in at a constant rate (several thousands per day) I would like to keep submissions open. The more data I get, the more interesting the results will be. However, if quite some time passes and I'm still getting several thousand submissions per day, I'll just have to decide when to cut it off. I want to see the final results soon too!
Why are you doing this?
For fun. This isn't for a class or anything; it's just an idea that my girlfriend and I came up with one morning. I like stats and I like psychology, so this is my idea of fun. :)