Fuggled

Derren Brown - Lottery Lies?

site@fuggled.co.uk — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:43:25 GMT

Well, people of Britain - why didn't you all win the lottery last night? Derren Brown (self-confessed pointy-bearded mind-fiddler) told you all exactly how to do it in an hour long televisual extravaganza - but no-one won the 7 million pound rollover this Saturday. How can this be? Surely Monsieur Brown is telling ze truth, non? Feeling smug, sir?

I've met Derren before - and he is genuinely a thoroughly nice fella. He once got me drunk without even drinking (yes, that really is me prancing about with a cold kebab). At least that was a genuine illusion with a very simple explanation (one that I am not going to indulge in here) - but my point is this - it's one thing to use 'suggestion, misdirection and showmanship' and quite another to just lie.

He didn't tell the truth on Friday - and I can prove it. For those of you who watched the live 'prediction' on Wednesday followed by Friday's hour-long special, you will already 'know' how he did it. But as Derren himself said, "You may not want to believe it". The mind-bender extraordinaire put his successful prediction down to "deep maths" and a "beautiful secret" he liked to call the "wisdom of the crowds". Or simply put - ask loads of people a question and then average out their answers to get the correct one.

Derren set up an online forum for his fans to post their theories - and not surprisingly, the 'wisdom of his crowd' didn't even come close to his pseudo-revelation, and to many people this didn't come as an ironic surprise.

This 'crowd wisdom' may work when trying to guestimate a single number - like the weight of an ox - and we can easily understand why. If enough people make individual guesses, and assuming that they are all sensible guesses, then the average of these guesses should be vaguely close to the truth. (A bit like 'ask-the-audience' in that Millionaire gameshow.)

The 'explanation' he gave on Friday just doesn't fit - it doesn't make sense - it doesn't even work. Using an average number can not predict anything - it can only be used to work out an average if the numbers people are guessing are sensible. But these guesses are not sensible. It makes no more sense for someone to guess the number '2' over the number '48' - there is no reason to think that either one is more likely.

Furthermore, if you were to ask 24 people to think of a random number between 1 and 49 - how on earth do you ever manage to get an 'average' answer of '2' (one of the balls that fell in the Lottery). This is almost impossible, as it would require at least half of the 24 people to write down the number 1, and the other half to write down the number 3. This just isn't going to happen any time soon. (Look back at the Friday show, and you will see that the group never averaged a single digit number in any of their practice runs).

You see, this 'deep maths' nonsense is a plain lie - if you ask 24 people to think of random numbers within a certain range, then statistically whenever you take an average it will lie within the center of the specified range. There may be small variations - and the results over time could easily be drawn as a bell curve, with the average number (in this case, 25) being the most likely to turn up as the 'average wisdom of the crowd'.

So, Mr Brown, as much as I am a fan, I just can't stomach your pseudo-babble on this one. Methinks perhaps this Youtube video may be closer to the truth.

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Derren Brown's show, The Events is running on Channel 4, each Friday this month.

Celebrity Death News Coverage

site@fuggled.co.uk — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:16:13 GMT

Microsoft's new interactive system

site@fuggled.co.uk — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:49:50 GMT

The Pirate Bay #spectrial - the copyright revolution?

site@fuggled.co.uk — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:23:58 GMT

Most people don't really understand what 'online piracy' means. Sure, they see the campaigns at the cinema telling people that pirate copies are poor quality and are an infringement on copyright. Everyone knows that you're not supposed to video tape a movie from your cinema seat and sell it on. These things are part of modern life now - but they are getting more and more prolific. You might be surprised to know that you can find online full copies of the latest blockbuster movies weeks before they come out in on release - in DVD quality. You can download any album you've ever heard of free of charge - in better-than CD quality. You can play any game designed for any console free of charge, watch any TV show, read any book, use any software programme - the list goes on. Of course - all of this is illegal. For now.

As I type, the world's most important copyright case is under trial in Sweden. The Pirate Bay, the world's largest search site for downloadable content, has been taken to court by several of the major film and music companies (think Warner Bros et al). What has this website done to so enrage Hollywood? - they've built built a site which indexes every single legal and illegal download on the internet, and they're proud of it. The site links directly to 'torrents', a type of peer-to-peer file stored on someone else's computer: one click lets you download it, and share it with the rest of the internet. (It's not as simple as that - see the comment below) The crime they are accused of? Enabling copyright infringement.

The trial has been turned into a 'spectacle' by avid followers of the site. At present a 'Pirate Bus' sits outside the courtroms, parties happen every night, bloggers are blogging furiously, Twitter is ablaze as each and every arguement is translated live into several different languages and spread across the internet. Live trial audio feeds, video feeds, twitter feeds and blog feeds are creating the largest online buzz ever seen. The site itself has risen in popularity, largely due to a swelling sense of solidarity among the download generation. There is even a film - Steal This Film - about the 'anti-copyright' movement available for free download (of course).

Why the big fuss? One reason - if The Pirate Bay wins, it's one more step towards a copyright-free world. It's power-to-the-people once again - in the copyright revolution.

Simple clean logo design

site@fuggled.co.uk — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:25:29 GMT

Here's a nice simple logo design that could be tweeked for almost any purpose. The basic colour scheme is modern and fresh and the text is clear. The logo portrays a simple message of creativity or birth (the egg), and ideas that sprout from it.

Photoshop Tutorial