The result
is thus reported: "In this way I wrote down, among other things, a
hair-brush--it was brought; an orange--it was brought; a wine-glass--it
was brought; an apple--it was brought; and so on, until many objects had
been selected and found by the child."
Passing over the details of many other experiments we find that the
following remarkable results were obtained by the committee: "Altogether,
three hundred and eighty-two trials were made in this series. In the case
of letters of the alphabet, of cards, and of numbers of two figures, the
chances of success on a first trial would naturally be 25 to 1, 52 to 1,
and 89 to 1, respectively; in the case of surnames they would of course be
infinitely greater. Cards were far most frequently employed, and the odds
in their case may be taken as a fair medium sample, according to which,
out of a whole series of three hundred and eighty-two trials, the average
number of successes at the first attempt by an ordinary guesser would be
seven and one-third. Of our trials, one hundred and twenty-seven were
successes on the first attempt, fifty-six on the second, nineteen on the
third--MAKING TWO HUNDRED AND TWO, OUT OF A POSSIBLE THREE HUNDRED AND
EIGHTY-TWO!" Think of this, while the law of averages called for only
seven and one-third successes at first trial, the children obtained one
hundred and twenty-seven, which, given a second and third trial, they
raised to two hundred and two! You see, this takes the matter entirely out
of the possibility of coincidence or mathematical probability.
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