William is doing a little experiment for fun: he asked a bunch of kids at school to guess a number he was thinking of between 1 and 10 (inclusive), and he recorded their answers. He’s intrigued by the results, and wants a bigger sample size, and I said I could ask on the blog, so that brings you up to where we are today. I’m putting a poll over to the right. (Avoid looking at comments before you vote.) [Poll closed; see results below.]
First instinct: 7.
Not gonna lie. I picked my favorite number (8), but if I was going to pick the number I thought he was thinking of, I’d pick 3. But why? Whhhhyyyyy?!
I had my 10 year old answer : )
I went with 7 and now I feel so … common.
I usually guess 3 (my fav number).
My guy said 7, but the answer is NEVER 7 when I guess these things, so I went with 6. Which is apparently a fairly middle-of-the-road answer. Not the most common, not the least common. I feel boring.
3
My anecdotal experience with college students is that they nearly always pick odd numbers, and always avoid the extremes boundaries they’re given. (If asked to chose between 1-10 inclusive, they never ever pick 1 and 10, if asked to chose between 0 and 360, they avoid 0 and 360 and anything too close to those.)
I picked 6.
5
7!
But…I think I was swayed by the first comment because I clicked the link from Facebook and it was the first thing I saw, before I read the post. If I might offer a suggestion, perhaps you could put some spaces in the post so none of the comments will be visible just yet?
Love that he’s doing this!
Caitlin- I tried that, but as the comments section expands, comments are always right next to the poll, no matter how many spaces I add.
4!
3!!!
Anne L.
That’s kinda freaky that so many of us said 7.
Although I’m not going to lie, the first number that popped into my head was 12, so 7 was only second place.
Does he know that seven is the most statistically common number to be rolled when rolling two dice? I play a lot of board games.
I went with 8 – but only after much dithering about what number he might be thinking about RIGHT THIS SECOND.
3! Very curious to hear his results.
I went with 3.
Angela-that is because opposite sides of dice equal 7.
6
I want to say 6, but 7 was my first instinct… so! 7!
3
4!
7
7 – my lucky number
I tend to pick 7 if I’m just asked to pick a number, but avoid it if I’m asked to pick a number someone ELSE is thinking of, since everyone knows everyone picks 7 and the person asking would therefore be tricky and purposely think of something else. So I picked 3. My three year old picked 5 and hubs picked 7 if you want more data points.
5
Donna says 1! I wanted a number that I thought no one else would pick….second choice was 10.
10 for me, 7 for my husband
First thought, 7.
Second thought, 7’s overrated, let’s go with 3.
5
3
8
I went with 7, and I always do when I pick between 1 and 10, haha. Hilarious! How interesting!
I think it’s really need that so many here are also commenting that they’ve picked 3!
I actually have some data on this at home somewhere. A group of students in my statistics course did a similar study a couple of years ago. Let me know if you want me to send it to you. I don’t have a copy of the report anymore, unfortunately – that would have been really interesting for your son. It was an excellent report – the students came up with some intriguing research questions.
5! (Am I too late?)
Can’t wait to hear the results on this!