Re: (UK) Derren Brown (OT)

nigel wrote:

For the benefit of those living abroad, Derren Brown spent 55 minutes of his hour long prog (that includes ad breaks) building up the theory that he had a team of 24 (or was it 23?) people in a semi-trance writing down numbers using 'automatic writing' then taking the averages.

Then in the last few minutes or so, he stated that he didn't manufacture 8 sets of replacement lottery balls weighing more than normal balls bearing the 6 required numbers (and he showed a set he 'didn't' have made), and he didn't get an insider to swap them for the correct balls just before the draw then swap them out again afterwards.

In my opinion both methods were meant to serve as misdirection and the real method, probably some optical trickery, remains unrevealed.

Evil Nigel


During Derren Brown's prog, he included an illustration of Walter Penney's coin-flip game.

He got a volunteer to pick a sequence of three coin flips (I think he chose HHH), then allocated another sequence to a second volunteer (THH). A coin was flipped a number of times and a count was made of how often each sequence occurred. The second volunteer had a group of people trying to use willpower to influence the tosses in his favour.

The second volunteer won by a considerable margin, something like ten occurrences to 2.

Derren Brown admitted the result was determined by maths rather than willpower, and the explanation was on the Channel 4 site (it isn't).

I can understand why THH will appear in a large sequence more often than HHH, but as I understand Penney's game, the rules enable the person choosing a sequence second to be able to chose more more likely to occur first, not necessarily more often overall. If the first volunteer had chosen say HTH, I'm not convinced the second volunteer would have necessarily won overall.

Penney's algorithm applies to any sequence, which also puzzles me.

The original volunteer 'chose' 'HHH'. The sequence more likely to occur first is 'THH'. But why can't the game be played by a third player choosing a sequence likely to occur before the second in 'TTH'. A fourth player could then choose the sequence more likely to occur before that with 'HTT'. A fifth player could then join in with 'HHT' and then a sixth with 'THH'. The sixth player is likely to beat the fifth player who is likely to beat the fourth player who is likely to beat the third player who is likely to beat the second player who chose the same sequence as the sixth player.

That's my half-braincell knackered for the day.

Evil Nigel

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