this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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LLMs are incredibly bad at any math because they just predict the most likely answer, so if you ask them to generate a random number between 1 and 100 it's most likely to be 47 or 34. Because it's just picking a selection of numbers that humans commonly use, and those happen to be the most statistically common ones, for some reason.
doesn't mean that it won't try, it'll just be incredibly wrong.
Son of a bitch, you are right!
now the funny thing? Go find a study on the same question among humans. It's also 47.
It's 37 actually. There was a video from Veritasium about it not that long ago.
A well-known mentalism "trick" from David Blaine was when he'd ask someone to "Name a two digit number from 1 to 50; make each digit an odd digit, but use different digits", and his guess would be 37. There are only eight values that work {13, 15, 17, 19, 31, 35, 37, 39}, and 37 was the most common number people would choose. Of course, he'd only put the clips of people choosing 37. (He'd mix it up by asking for a number between 50 and 100, even digits, different digits, and the go-to number was 68 iirc.)
It's almost like that is exactly what KillingTime said two parent comments ago......
I got 42, I was disappointed
I did too. Maybe that one is #3 most common
I’m here for LLM’s responding that 42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything, just because enough people said the same.
42 would have been statistically the most likely answer among the original humans of earth, until our planet got overrun with telehone sanitizers, public relations executives and management consultants.
The reason is probably dumb, like people picking a common fraction (half or a third) and then fuzzing it a little to make it "more random". Is the third place number close to but not quite 25 or 75?
idk the third place number off the top of my head, but that might be the case, although you would have to do some really weird data collection in order to get that number.
I think it's just something fundamentally pleasing about the number itself that the human brain latches onto. I suspect it has something to do with primes, or "pseudo" primes, numbers that seem like primes, but aren't since they're probably over represented in our head among "random" numbers even though primes are perfectly predictable.
Its a bit more complicated but here's a cool video on the topic https://youtu.be/d6iQrh2TK98
Ok, that's interesting, but you amusingly picked the wrong number in the original comment, picking 34 rather than 37.
I did not pick any number. That was my first comment in the thread
Me: Pick a number between 1 and 100
Gemini: I picked a number between 1 and 100. Is there anything else I can help you with?
ah yes my favorite number.