COINCIDENCES, LUCK, CHANCE 



serve were slowly altering their centre of gravity. Never- 

 theless, all interested in the record of mental progress, re- 

 vere the overworked student who died young, at Damascus, 

 with the moan *'0h, my book, my book, I shall never 

 finish my book !" 



Pardon this digression on Buckle, and permit me to 

 hark back to chance — in its old sense of ** perchance." 

 I have tried to get information as to the numerical proba- 

 bilities of being correct in pure guess-work ; but apparently 

 this field is as yet, almost virgin ; or I have not looked in 

 the right spot for the results of such experiments, and the 

 whole matter is more complicated than it appears to be at 

 first sight, for there are at least two unknown factors 

 (possibly more) in the attempted solution of such equa- 

 tions ; (a) of variation in the thing to be guessed ; {d) of 

 idiosyncrasy in the guesser himself. May I illustrate the 

 latter point by saying that some years ago, a firm in lyos 

 Angeles put a very large squash uncut in their store win- 

 dow, advertising a prize of $ioo to the correct guesser of 

 its contained seeds. The only requisite being, to enter and 

 register, name, residence and guess number. There were 

 three correct guesses ; (8ii) in the 7,70c who registered. 

 Most of us would, I think, infer that the squash was the 

 only factor requiring consideration, but an analysis of these 

 7,700 guesses shows that the guesser is not an absolutely 

 free agent ; unconscious as he may be of any bias or ten- 

 dency in himself ; for, tabulating this long string of 

 guesses, it comes out clearly that this fairly representative 

 people had themselves an unknown preference for cer- 

 tain numerals. Ignoring the hundreds column and total- 

 ling the tens and unit column the choice in numerals stood 

 thus: First in rank O (used 2,102 times) ; then No. 7, 

 (1977); No. 9 (1650); No. 5(1629); No. 3 (1463); and No. 



1 (1305); then follow the even numerals, No. 6 (1080); No. 



2 (965); No. 8 (933); and No. 4 (831); which result shows 

 clearly our strong preference for the odd numbers and for 



