Seconds are even? Type ‘f’. Odd? Type ‘d’. (Or vice-versa. Or use minutes, if you don’t have to do this very often.)
A while ago there was an article (in NYTimes online, I think) about a program that could beat anyone in Rock-Paper-Scissors. That is, it would take a few iterations, and learn your pattern, and do better than chance against you.
It never got any better than chance against me, because I just used the current time as a PRNG.
Over 12 rounds against the veteran computer, I managed 5-4-3, just trying to play “counterintuitively” and play differently from how I expected the players whose information it aggregated would play.
Not enough repetitions to be highly confident that I could beat the computer in the long term, but I stopped because trying to be that counterintuitive is a pain.
Got 7-6-7 with the same tactic. Apparently the computer only looks at the last 4 throws, so as long as you’re playing against Veteran (where your own rounds will be lost in the noise), it should be possible for a human to learn “anti-anti-patterns” and do better than chance.
19-18-13 over 50 rounds against the veteran, without using any external RNG, by looking away and thinking of something else so that I couldn’t remember the results of previous rounds. (My after-lunch drowsiness probably helped.)
Somehow managed 16-8-5 versus the veteran computer, by using the articles own text as a seed “Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules...” and applying a-h = rock, i-p = paper, q-z = scissors, I think this is the technique I will use against humans (I know a few people I would love to see flail against pseudo-randomness).
That should fail in the long run because it’s unlikely that the frequency of letters in English divides so evenly that those rules make each choice converge to happening exactly 1⁄3 of the time.
I’d just generate the random numbers in my head. A useful thing to do is to pick a couple of numbers from thin air (which doesn’t work by itself because the human mind isn’t good at picking ‘random’ numbers from thin air), then adding them together and then taking the last digit (or if you wantt 3 choices, taking them mod 3).
There’s an easier way: look at the time.
Seconds are even? Type ‘f’. Odd? Type ‘d’. (Or vice-versa. Or use minutes, if you don’t have to do this very often.)
A while ago there was an article (in NYTimes online, I think) about a program that could beat anyone in Rock-Paper-Scissors. That is, it would take a few iterations, and learn your pattern, and do better than chance against you.
It never got any better than chance against me, because I just used the current time as a PRNG.
Edit: Found it. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/rock-paper-scissors.html?_r=0
Edit2: Over 25 rounds, 12-6-7 (win-loss-tie) vs. the “veteran” computer. Try it and post your results! :)
Over 12 rounds against the veteran computer, I managed 5-4-3, just trying to play “counterintuitively” and play differently from how I expected the players whose information it aggregated would play.
Not enough repetitions to be highly confident that I could beat the computer in the long term, but I stopped because trying to be that counterintuitive is a pain.
Got 7-6-7 with the same tactic. Apparently the computer only looks at the last 4 throws, so as long as you’re playing against Veteran (where your own rounds will be lost in the noise), it should be possible for a human to learn “anti-anti-patterns” and do better than chance.
14-11-14 over 39 rounds using gwern’s linked prng (p=69, m=6, seed=minutes+seconds). Yet another cool trick to impress psychology professors!
I got 8-9-7 over 25 rounds (which seems approximately as good as chance) while trying to be smart (and not using any source of randomness).
Edit: I guess this was actually 24 rounds.
19-18-13 over 50 rounds against the veteran, without using any external RNG, by looking away and thinking of something else so that I couldn’t remember the results of previous rounds. (My after-lunch drowsiness probably helped.)
10-5-10 against veteran by trying to predict the computer and occasionally changing levels of recursion.
Second try: 14-16-15 by trying to act randomly (without conciously using an algorithm).
9-6-10 here out of 25 rounds, using current time. :(
I remember doing way better than this a few months ago, just by playing naturally. Gonna blame sample size...
Somehow managed 16-8-5 versus the veteran computer, by using the articles own text as a seed “Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules...” and applying a-h = rock, i-p = paper, q-z = scissors, I think this is the technique I will use against humans (I know a few people I would love to see flail against pseudo-randomness).
That should fail in the long run because it’s unlikely that the frequency of letters in English divides so evenly that those rules make each choice converge to happening exactly 1⁄3 of the time.
I’d just generate the random numbers in my head. A useful thing to do is to pick a couple of numbers from thin air (which doesn’t work by itself because the human mind isn’t good at picking ‘random’ numbers from thin air), then adding them together and then taking the last digit (or if you wantt 3 choices, taking them mod 3).
9-6-10 here out of 25 rounds, using current time. :(