Experiment

In case you were wondering what the buttons were about the other day, I can now explain. At work we have a predictor-board in one of the rooms. There are usually up to three sporting or other events written up there, and everyone is invited to predict the scores/number of runs/who will be evicted next etc.

I came up with a predictor… given the instructions “Press the Red Button” and two buttons, what proportion of clicks would each button receive.

Well… the reasoning mostly went thus:

“Most people will click the correct button, then afterwards click the wrong button. However, some will click only the correct button. There may be variations, but it’ll be something like that.”

So the predictions went up… 80% red, 60% red, 72% red… and so on.

I had a different line of thinking:

“Knowing my blog readers, I reckon that the green button will receive more clicks than the red.”

I went for 45% red.

Results

You can see the results here.

Any clicks from work were discarded, and 95 unique IP addresses were identified. Most people clicked red, then after around ten seconds would click green.

Some results were interesting: several people clicked green first, then red. Few people clicked only on red and fewer clicked only on green.

But the real saviour for me, and the person who gave me the winning percentage was…. brbrbrbrbrbrrbrbbr*drumroll*….

Mr. Hedgehog (judging by the IP address)

… who clicked red, then green. Then the following day clicked green green green green green green green green green green green green green green green green green green green green.

Thanks! I knew I could rely on you!