# Five seconds: 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. Your guess is already wrong.

- Series: [The Better Guess](https://miu.fm/thebetterguess.md)
- Published: 2026-10-11
- Page: https://miu.fm/thebetterguess/five-seconds-8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1-your-guess-is-already-wrong

## Story

Five seconds: 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. Your guess is already wrong.

In 1974 the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman reported a test. A wheel of fortune numbered 0 to 100 was spun in front of people, and then they were asked what percentage of the countries in the United Nations are African. When the wheel had shown 10, the middle guess was 25 percent. When it had shown 65, the middle guess was 45. Paying people for accurate answers did not help.

The same paper gave high school students five seconds for the sum in this video. Written from 8 down, the middle guess was 2,250. Written from 1 up, it was 512. The answer is 40,320. Both groups worked out the first few steps and stopped far too low.

Tversky and Kahneman called it anchoring: we start from the first number we have and don't move far enough away. You can't guess without an anchor, so pick yours on purpose: start from how often things like this usually happen.

The dots are a sketch around the reported middle guesses.

What did you guess, and where did you start?

Sources: Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases", Science 185, 1974; Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011, chapter 23.
Sounds: Apple iMovie sound effects.

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