Randomness and The Wall TV game show
Have you ever wondered how random is a ‘random’ outcome in a TV game show? Let’s take The Wall for example, which aired a few months ago in my country, Greece, following a successful run in other countries as well.
In short, contestants have to answer some questions given and decide from which of the seven available starting points the ball is going to begin its journey down the wall hitting the prizes.
One would assume the route of the ball is random and so is the outcome. Randomness, however, requires a set of variables that take different values every single time we run an experiment and which we cannot calculate. For instance, a dice roll, thrown by a human being is indeed a random experiment. Why? Because the route of the dice and therefore the result is determined by uncertainty in factors such as tiny movements in the thrower’s hand, direction, and strength of the wind, ruggedness of the surface, etc.
On the contrary, these factors do not exist on The Wall. What happens is a deterministic experiment with only one possible outcome assuming that factors such as the way the ball is released, the grid layout, etc, remain constant. Confused?? Let’s have a look at this video where three balls are released simultaneously from the starting point number six.
As I said, this is a deterministic experiment. In particular, in an attempt to describe the experiment and for illustration purposes, we can assume there is an equation that determines where the ball is going to.
A, B, C,… are the variables which we consider to be constant. These are, as mentioned before, the grid layout, the way the ball is released, the material from which the grid is made of, etc. The only thing that changes is X which is the starting point. What that means is, if we run the same experiment one thousand times with these three balls starting their fall from tube six, they will follow exactly the same route ending up to $10, $400k and $1Million spots with the same order in the exact same time, every single time.
Now, I do not know if there were other cases where a contestant put three balls in tube six to see if they had the same outcome, but I have seen balls starting from a certain point ending up to different ports following different routes. Thus, my assumption about the constant variables is false. That means at least one of the factors mentioned above, A, B, C,… changes. However, the experiment remains deterministic, again with no uncertainty involved, just with altered variables. Therefore, the outcome can be predictable and consequently the producers of the show are in a position to control that outcome. Whether or not that is their intention is unknown.
Blown??
