Seeking Order in Randomness

Jan. 1 -- Not surprisingly, people interpreted the recent statistical tie in the Florida election in a variety of ways.

Ties seem to bring out our differing mind-sets and preconceptions. I had a visceral illustration of this when Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles T. Wells quoted me in his dissent from last month’s court decision to allow a recount to continue.

The remark, “The margin of error in this election is far greater than the margin of victory, no matter who wins,” in my opinion, lent greater moral weight both to Al Gore’s popular vote victory and to the plurality of Floridians who, I believe, intended to vote for him. It also accorded with the demand for a manual recount.

But have no fear; this piece is not a rehash of the post-election drama. Rather, it investigates the more general question of how people can look at nebulous, inconclusive data and draw very different conclusions from it. One illustration of this is a party game (discussed by philosopher Daniel Dennett in a different context).

Dream Weaving Game

Imagine a group of people at a New Year’s Eve party who choose one person and ask him (or her) to leave the room. The victim is informed that while he is out of the room one of the other partygoers will relate a recent dream to the group. He is also told that on his return to the party, he must try, asking Yes or No questions only, to do two things: reconstruct the dream and figure out whose it was.

The punch line is that no one relates any dream. The partygoers decide to respond either Yes or No to the victim’s questions according to chance or, perhaps, according to some arbitrary rule. Any rule will do and may be supplemented by a non-contradiction requirement so that no answer directly contradicts an earlier one.

The surprising result is that the victim, impelled by his own obsessions, often constructs an outlandish and obscene dream in response to the random answers he elicits. He may also think he knows whose dream it was, but then the trick is revealed to him. (It’s a good way to lose a friend.)