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At UT Austin, there was a Physics class called "Pseudoscience" taught by Rory Coker(?). The class was on precisely the topic mentioned; it was a graded attendance-based class. (You lost a grade letter for every 1–2 classes you skipped.)

Rory was a master class mentalist — literally world famous. When other world class magicians were on the continent or passing through they'd come visit him. Invariably, he'd make them do a 10m opener for the class (usually mentalist, illusion, and close up). Did I mention the class average was a C?

Anyways, for the final, Rory did his trick: he chatted to us for a few minutes, drawing a picture; then we all had ~30s to draw a picture. Then, he chatted with some people — kinda at random — then picked one person to seal their picture in an envelope. At the end of the class was the reveal: he'd drawn this picture the girl drew. More importantly, just about everyone drew the same picture.

Then he made his point: depending on how he was feeling, there were about a half dozen pictures he could get an audience to draw.

Eye opening.



If you ask a person to guess a number from 1 to 10, most will guess 7. 7 appears to be more "random" than other digits.

I keep dice on my desk for generating random digits.




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