;Thought Experiment

[servant]

Hey everyone. Just doing a little experiment here! I'd like to see what everyone's results are! Post them here after following my directions!

First of all, write down a number. This number may be any number, but for your convenience, I suggest taking a number that is less than 100.

Have you done so? Good! Now, multiply this number by two.

If you've done that, then please be so kind to add eight to the result of the previous calculation. Write this number down.

Is there anything unique about this number? Is there something special? Write it down somewhere different, because this number should be posted again for experiment's sake!

Well, once you've written that number down, halve the number you have.

Finally, subtract the original number you had. If your original number was 22, for example, subtract 22 from whatever result you have from the previous maths.

Alright, the result should be somewhere between one and twenty-six.

Take this number and link it to a letter of the alphabet. For reference:

1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, 4 = D, 5 = E, 6 = F and so forth.

Have you done so? Great!

Think of the name of a country that starts with the letter you just got. If you got a Z, for example, you have Zimbabwe.

Take the second letter of the country name, and think of an animal whose name starts with that same letter. Zimbabwe has an 'i', so we have an 'iguana'!

Now think of the colour of that animal.

Please post what the result is!


(PS: Grey elephants in Denmark? That's just silly.)

[III]

Reddish-Brown Orangutans in the Dominican Republic.

*shrugs*

[nascent]

(PS: Grey elephants in Denmark? That's just silly.)

This isn't a thought experiment... it's a MIND CONTROL EXPERIMENT! There's no other way you could've known I'd come up with that! xP

So... do we get to learn the secret to your little experiment after we've done it?

[kempff]

My result is not entirely random due to an infatuation with my chosen number.

Djibouti, with Brown Jackalope.

(I suspect haxs in this by the way)

[servant]

Well, I haven't seen anyone post his initial number yet, Nascent, so...

Maybe.

[III]

I'd be interested to know what the differences would be if you didn't include that last sentence in your first post. xD

[servant]

Intentionally thinking of another country because of my post scriptum? You've already lost at that point.

[III]

Mhmmm. And yet, it's probably going to be your only basis for comparison, no? Results herein cannot be extrapolated to 'real life' populations working with pen and paper and no, say, internet. Your conclusions generalized to real life/internet life people would be all over the place and methodologically speaking, it'd be difficult to figure out which, if any of them, are the most plausible.

Unless you're looking at how long it takes someone to note what the trick is? Hm.

Still, I find the 'answer/no answer' variable to be the more interesting. Still, I'm not entirely sure I want to know what it says about me.

(Disclaimer: I'm in a methodology and research design class for anthropology. I think it's starting to show. xD)

[servant]

Intentionally finding an answer different from the one I proposed is not the core of the issue I was curious of. Of course, it would have been fun if you weren't such children about it by thinking of other answers (), but still no one's given me what I am hoping for.

[kempff]

24. That was my number.

I'll bite because I'm curious. Fire away my trappy friend~

D sucked by the way, very much suckage (off the top of my head I knew of three countries starting with D, checking later I found four...)

[nascent]

I started with 18. Does that help?

[servant]

So, what are the similarities, that both of you ended up with a 'D'?

[Dante]

I'll take a shot at this... To start...

My first number was 45.

I got Black ostriches in Dominica.

Now, for something I think everyone should've tried at least 5-7 times. Here's how it works...

Take both 24 and 50, for example...

Double it and get 48 and 100. Add 8 to each to get 56 and 108.

Halve that to get 28 and 54. Asking us to subtract the original number, we get the number 4 each and every time. Simple mathematics. You're simply reversing the process you started with up until you halve it. You then are forced to subtract the original sum to get the only aswer possible, 4=D. The animal and country is just there to make us think much to hard.

(Pretty sure someone came up with this idea... but hey...)

[servant]

And there we have what I was looking for. Someone to realise I was distracting you from the fact you're just adding eight and halving that, no matter what number you'd pick.

You always get a D. And Denmark is the least obscure country with a D.

Of course, the memberbase here seems... slanted towards Dominica? It's a bit weird, but all other places I tried this resulted in Denmark.

[nascent]

In other words, Trap set a trap. (HA, LOL). Y'know, I reeeaaally should've been able to figure that out, considering that my dad's a math teacher and all. Kudos to you.