SCIENTIFIC AMERIKEN: SINGULARITY   

Purpose: Every game breeds innovators who develop strategies to effectively beat the game - regardless of how simple a game may be. In this study the focus is a game called Singularity. The concept is basically to guess the lowest possible number that no one else has guessed. For example of 3 people play, two people guess "1" and the third guesses "2" then 2 is the singularity. To develop a strategy, Scientific AmeriKen undertook a year long investigation, through its own singularity game, to gather significant data. In total, nearly 40 participants submitted over 1000 numbers in hopes of finding the singularity - but in the end there can be only one.

Materials and Methods: The rules of singularity were modified to allow for a greater number of entries to increase numbers. Each participant was allowed up to 100 guesses per email address which could allow for an infinite number of guesses of they so chose. The data was mined using the programming language SQL to determine the participant with the lowest non-duplicated number. Additionally $50.00 was used to attract participants

Hypothesis: Scientific AmeriKen would have guessed that 134 would be the singularity as most two digit numbers would be guessed and most in the 100's, yet 134 is just a wierd looking number and would be expected to be unpicked.

Results:

THE SINGULARITY: 85 CONTEST WINNER: Paul D. - Alexandria, MN                            (city featured in the global warming experiment) During the time Singularity was available Scientific AmeriKen received 19011 unique hits on the site. 1376 of these actually went to the singularity contest page only 37 people participated. Total number of guesses: 1069 Top number of guesses by one person: 101 Number of people who guessed 100 times: 8 Number who guessed only once: 9 Top ten singularities: 85,87,113,114,116,122,125,128,129,130 Most guessed = 1 (17), 2(13), 3(9), 4(9), 5(8), 24(8), 43(8), 101(8) Top 5 singularities for a first guess: 5, 12, 14, 24, 30 Top 5 largest numbers: 7209430220, 5555555577, 4124222232, 4124222232, 1998998999 Average Guess: 188

Conclusions: These data indicate that a general strategy is to guess much lower than one would at first suspect. This idea is supported by the fact that participants lack key knowledge of how many other participants are playing and thus guess with defensively high numbers (inferred by such guesses as 7,209,430,220). The format of this singularity may have affected the winning number however. A simple strategy given this format would be to simply fill in all the numbers between 1-1000 with 10 different email addresses. Of course such a strategy runs into pitfalls of the possibility someone else does the same, thus wasting all the effort and in the end $50.00 just isn't worth it. Given the results of this experiment, Scientific AmeriKen will pursue further experimentation and investigate whether incentive matters in - SINGULARITY II!

SINGULARITY II

Contest Complete!
Check out the experiment by clicking here!