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I see patterns in the codes!
Do you see patterns in the Sesame codes? That's only human.
The human brain is optimised for pattern recognition. Even in numerical series.
And especially with six-positional codes, because these fit in one's short
term memory.
Codes like 000000 or 123456 can occur, each with a chance of one in a million.
Avoiding it would have been more awkward than showing them when it is their
time.
Two consecutive codes which are the same can occur, also with a chance of
one in a million and not as some people think, one in a trillion.
Regular-looking codes like 611211 can occur, and their chance is fairly decent,
because the same pattern is in 544944 or even 544933 and 445449. There are
16200 of such combinations, making them occur about once in every 62
insertions.
The brain's pattern recognition is even triggered by the triple-digit
pattern in codes like 912228.
There are ten possible digits for those three consecutive positions,
and there are four positions where this can start. The other three digits
can have any value made from the remaining nine digits.
This makes the pattern far from unique; it's chance is 29160 in a million,
or about once in every 34 insertions.
Informal patterns often occur in the code space. There is nothing wrong
with them. When asked for a random number, humans rarely pick such codes
with patterns, but this is exactly why computers do a better job at
picking (seemingly) random numbers -- they follow the laws of chance and
thus show such pattern-ridden codes as well as other codes.
Posted on Mon, 19 Jun 2006, 11:24.
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