The goal of the exercise is to deepen your understanding of what randomness is by having you try to behave randomly. Whether humans can behave randomly is important to psychology (as well as to the gaming industry!).  Most psychological theories would argue that it would be extremely difficult for people to behave randomly (more about this later). There are three levels to this exercise, each subsuming an earlier level. Start with level 1 and work up either to the level your instructor wants you to do or until you can't stand it! Working the entire exercise will take you about 1.5 hours.

You'll need a browser capable of reading style sheets, javascript and animated gifs (Netscape 4.0 or Explorer 3.0), a monitor which can display a document at least 9 inches wide at a 640 x 480 resolution (at least a 12" monitor where the browser window consumes the entire screen), and knowledge about how to move among pages via a back/forward browser buttons.

The Lay of the Land (Exercise Index):

1. Introduction: What is randomness and why you should care about it
   1. a failure of randomness: the 1969 draft lottery

   2. levels 2 and 3: definition problems, chaos, and beating the lottery

2. Imagine random outcomes: can you do it?

   1. Four tests for randomness and a self-quiz for understanding the tests

   2. levels 2 and 3: Deviating significantly from chance

   3. level 3: determining autocorrelation or serial dependency

   4. Interpreting your results and viewing them in a summary table

   5. The gambler's and hot hand fallacies, plus some misconceptions about probability

   6. Applications and implications of failing to understand randomness

3. What does a "real" sequence of 100 coin flips look like?

   1. Comparing real and imagined coin flips to statistical standards

   2. level 3: Can we do better? Link to "real" random number generators

   3. Why is it so hard to understand the concept of randomness and to behave randomly?

4. Assessing your learning:

   1. acting more randomly

   2. passing a quiz

   3. evaluating the exercise

Begin: level 1 introduction

copyrightŪ 1998 revised 11-9-99

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