Hacker News Reader

Comment by blauwbilgorgel | Hacker News Reader

I would imagine you would get a distribution favored to 3 and 7. We did similar research during a Cognitive Science class. We asked a number from 1 to 4, and got over 40% 3's.

We also did research to find favored Mastermind patterns. Bias was a large problem there too. When presented with colors, people would pick a single color more often or place the same colors next to each other. When presented with letters, people would try to spell out words.

Peculiar: In product pricing and conversion testing, prices with 7's and 9's seem to provide more favorable results. I believe this is akin to the favorite-color bias we happened upon (7 is my lucky number!), mixed with the slight confusing nature of calculating/rounding down a price ending in 7 or 9 (hey, it's still $2999, so just 2 grand and then some).

View on HN

Does your university have a significant Asian population?

Three (homonym with "alive") is a lucky number in Chinese culture. Four (homonym with "death") is an unlucky number. Apartment buildings built for Chinese persons often skip all floor numbers with "4" in them as well as all apartment numbers with "4" in them.

You can find some buildings in the US with no 13th floor.

Yeah. Lots of them have twelve floors or fewer.

Har!

I'd like to see one that starts on the 14th floor. I mean, if we're going to indulge arbitrary biases, let's go all-out.

And while we're at it, let's have at least a few cases where we number the ceilings, too.

"I’m staying at a hotel right now, there’s no 13th floor because of superstition. But come on man, the people on the 14th floor, you know what floor you’re really on. If you jump out of the 14th floor hoping to kill yourself, you will die earlier." ~Mitch Hedberg

He makes a fair point though--if you're so superstitious that you're uncomfortable with the thirteenth floor, shouldn't you be uncomfortable about it regardless of its nomenclature?

Don't know about 3, but if a price includes lots of 8s, the seller is definitely aiming at Chinese buyers. Seeing this left and right here in Vancouver, and it looks corny at best. Like trying to lure Russians with a picture of vodka, or Americans with that of a cowboy hat.

I would also guess that it's biased more toward 7 than toward 3. That's the conventional wisdom, isn't it? Below 4, 3; below 10, 7; below 20, 17; below 40, 37. Or has this bit of pop-math folklore been lost in translation?

Below 15: 13 Below 50: 42

"Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number." "Er, five," said the mattress. "Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"

I'm not sure the latter's true for anyone other than hardcore geeks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com