Does it really have to be "random"?

[lobster]

the TTD bonus thread inspired this .. when a game show has an element that is purported to be "random", is there really an S&P requirement that some mechanism is in place to truly "randomize", or do producers just hand-pick what goes where, since that's just as "random" to the contestant?  Example:  If the contestant has no prior knowledge of the whereabouts of the dragon, what difference does it make if it's truly "shuffled" by a computer, or hand-picked to be placed by a person?

right before my Lingo ep, this guy ("Al") told us that he was a 3rd party compliance contractor (who said he's done this for 20 years and for tons of game shows) and his whole job was to "randomize the words and make sure they're fairly distributed" --- which I thought was funny and pointless .. couldn't the producers of the show do that themselves without facing any kind of unfairness scrutiny? .. or at least load the words into some huge database that just spits out the words randomly if they were really worried about that?  

/i want his job

[Kevin Prather]

I think there are some FCC rules that say you can't call something random if it isn't. How often did PYL say they're board bounced "randomly"?

[BrandonFG]

Well, how about D/ND? Does Howie ever mention that the dollar values are randomly selected? I've seen a couple of episodes where it seemed like much more of a coincidence that the $1 mil was in the selected case, i.e. the NFL episode with the Indianapolis Colts fan. The million dollar case just "happened" to be in number 18, or Peyton Manning's number. Mm hmm sure, Endemol.

[Chuck Sutton]

[quote name=\'fostergray82\' post=\'178152\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 06:09 PM\']
Well, how about D/ND? Does Howie ever mention that the dollar values are randomly selected? I've seen a couple of episodes where it seemed like much more of a coincidence that the $1 mil was in the selected case, i.e. the NFL episode with the Indianapolis Colts fan. The million dollar case just "happened" to be in number 18, or Peyton Manning's number. Mm hmm sure, Endemol.
[/quote]


If my memory serves he says "placed there by a thrid party."  He does not say random.

[lobster]

[quote name=\'whoserman\' post=\'178151\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 04:40 PM\']
I think there are some FCC rules that say you can't call something random if it isn't. How often did PYL say they're board bounced "randomly"?
[/quote]

that's what I'm saying though -- Must a computer with a true randomizing algorithm be involved for something to be considered random?  -- if I hide a ball under a cup, and show you four cups and tell you one of the holds the ball, as far as YOU are concerned, it IS random, even though I chose the placement of the ball personally.  

Certainly when the chip is placed in the shell game (or the X in Tic Tac Toe, or the cards in Punch-a-Bunch) on TPiR, some staffer or producer just CHOOSES the placements, wouldn't you think?  Same with the "CAR" card on Card Sharks, placement of dollar amounts in envelopes each celebrity on HS held, etc.   Do they really need to have an S&P-type third party do all of that?  If the contestant doesn't see the placement, it is random to THEM, true?

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'lobster\' post=\'178154\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 06:24 PM\']
if I hide a ball under a cup, and show you four cups and tell you one of the holds the ball, as far as YOU are concerned, it IS random, even though I chose the placement of the ball personally. [/quote]

Certainly when the chip is placed in the shell game (or the X in Tic Tac Toe, or the cards in Punch-a-Bunch) on TPiR, some staffer or producer just CHOOSES the placements, wouldn't you think?

But in both of these situations, the contestant is never told that "We randomly mixed the slips" or even in your own example, you didn't tell me "I randomly selected a cup".  

I can't remember the show in question, but I distinctively remember them saying something to the order of: "We have randomly placed x amounts behind x numbered squares...good luck."  

IIRC, "Treasure Hunt" used a randomly selection (drawing a number out of a hat/box) to pick which box hid the jackpot.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'178156\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 03:31 PM\']
IIRC, "Treasure Hunt" used a randomly selection (drawing a number out of a hat/box) to pick which box hid the jackpot.
[/quote]
It might even have been a hatbox.

[tvrandywest]

I'll let you answer the TTD question by thinking about the HS secret square. It was selected by the producers and shown to the home audience in advance. It's not a random selection in either of these examples. Nor are the dollar amounts placed in the DoND cases a random selection.

The same holds true for the games on TPiR, such as the selection of the shell under which we find the ball, the correct digits on "Any Number", etc., etc.. They are all selected in advance and noted on production sheets that are distributed to those who need to know. As the announcer I could hear on the PL in my headphones the cue to the director, sfx person and others when a selection was right or wrong, just before the reveal.

S&P would be involved with monitoring the selections and the paperwork on which they are noted. Hope that helps.

Randy
tvrandywest.com

[Matt Ottinger]

What Randy said.  He's actually there.

Moreover, if something is 'random', that does not have to mean it's computer-generated random.  If the TTD producers really made their selection randomly, they could still have picked a card, or a number out of a hat, or any of a hundred different legitimate random means to select a number, and then programmed the computer accordingly.

[HYHYBT]

The same holds true for the games on TPiR, such as the selection of the shell under which we find the ball, the correct digits on "Any Number", etc., etc.. They are all selected in advance and noted on production sheets that are distributed to those who need to know.

Do they select in advance where the Shell Game ball starts out, or where it will end up after the host moves the shells around? (not that it really matters, unless Drew starts moving it to the same place every game)

[ClockGameJohn]

[quote name=\'HYHYBT\' post=\'178190\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 01:18 AM\']
Do they select in advance where the Shell Game ball starts out, or where it will end up after the host moves the shells around? (not that it really matters, unless Drew starts moving it to the same place every game)
[/quote]

The location of the ball in Shell Game is picked by the Producer when the game is actually in place for a playing.  The location is noted where the ball begins.

One difference in Shell Game versus, say Any Number, as Randy pointed out is that the ball in Shell Game can't really be moved or changed by anyone once the game begins, so there's not a major need for S&P to know where the ball is.  A game such as Any Number, could theoretically be lit up however someone wanted it to.

[Craig Karlberg]

Here are my "random" thoughts FWIW:

Even if there's a 25% chance at any time that one of the 4 shells has the ball under it, placing chips next to a shell can change the complextion of the probability.  For each shell lifted, either one of 2 things happen, no ball which means the game continues or ball meaning the player either wins or loses depending on the chip placement.  Sometimes, I wonder if Bob Barker actually "felt" the ball inside the shells as he shuffled them.

As for PYL, there WAS a pattern early on in its run,  The Big Bucks documentary clearly showed us how Larsen was able to sucessfully "read" the pattern in order to win $110K+.  After his big win, the producers decided to make the board more random but even so there was still some patterns to the board.

I always wondered  if there were 362,880 combinations(9!) on a 3x3 grid, why were there repetitions on the Tic Tac Dough board. Then I reailized, it was programmed that way since the monitors were hooked up to an Apple IIe.  That's how I figured that when I programed a random number generator program in high school, it wasn't "truly random" when you first start the program each day.

As for the non-computer generated random selections, only those involved in the selections know exactly where everything is so S&P's there to see fit that everything's on the "level".  There's really no cheating or rigging unless S&P makes notes of any odd behaviors going on in the process.

[Chuck Sutton]

[quote name=\'Craig Karlberg\' post=\'178193\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 04:32 AM\']
Even if there's a 25% chance at any time that one of the 4 shells has the ball under it, placing chips next to a shell can change the complextion of the probability.  For each shell lifted, either one of 2 things happen, no ball which means the game continues or ball meaning the player either wins or loses depending on the chip placement.  Sometimes, I wonder if Bob Barker actually "felt" the ball inside the shells as he shuffled them.
[/quote]

Every time I saw the Shell Game, Bob narrowed it down to two shells this one you win, this one you don't; no matter how many chips the player started with; 1, 2, or 3.  

So I thought it was obvious he knew where the ball was.

[TimK2003]

[quote name=\'Chuck Sutton\' post=\'178195\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 08:54 AM\']
[quote name=\'Craig Karlberg\' post=\'178193\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 04:32 AM\']
Even if there's a 25% chance at any time that one of the 4 shells has the ball under it, placing chips next to a shell can change the complextion of the probability.  For each shell lifted, either one of 2 things happen, no ball which means the game continues or ball meaning the player either wins or loses depending on the chip placement.  Sometimes, I wonder if Bob Barker actually "felt" the ball inside the shells as he shuffled them.
[/quote]

Every time I saw the Shell Game, Bob narrowed it down to two shells this one you win, this one you don't; no matter how many chips the player started with; 1, 2, or 3.  

So I thought it was obvious he knew where the ball was.
[/quote]


If you notice on the Shell Game, the "shells" are lined with some type of foam rubber material -- enough to muffle the ball noise hitting the sides of the shell when they are moved around, but the ball still can be felt hitting the sides by the host to ensure that they keep that shell in play to the end, if they so desire.

[lobster]

[quote name=\'Craig Karlberg\' post=\'178193\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 03:32 AM\']

I always wondered  if there were 362,880 combinations(9!) on a 3x3 grid, why were there repetitions on the Tic Tac Dough board. Then I reailized, it was programmed that way since the monitors were hooked up to an Apple IIe.  That's how I figured that when I programed a random number generator program in high school, it wasn't "truly random" when you first start the program each day.

[/quote]

When I first started playin around in BASIC on the ol' IBM PCjr, I remember the rnd command was to give a random decimal number between 0 and 1..  so in order to have it choose a random number between 1 and 10, you would take the CINT (integer rounded to the "ceiling") of the rnd*10, so if you were given 0.395033988 as the rnd, the cint(rnd*10) would yield your "random" number between 1 and 10 = 4

The problem was, every time you ran the program, it would give you the same set of rnd's unless you stuck a "RANDOMIZE TIMER" before you started to ask it to spit out rnd's.. then it would synch up the randomization with some millisecond coding... Which yielded relatively random numbers, unless you ran your program and precisely the same millisecond more than once .. it wasn't true pure randomness, but it worked for making cheesy number and word guessing games