How are you today?

There’s something in that.

There’s a street magic trick that works all of the time 60% of the time.

Think of an odd number between 1 and 100, both digits must be different. The most likely answer is 37.

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If it’s going to have two digits, it has to be between 10 and 100, actually.

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That’s part of the trick.

There’s very few numbers that actually fill the criteria.

I just tried that with my wife and she picked 43! I looked like a fool! Why did I mary a 40% person?

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My partner picked 27 (she was going to go with 37 but changed her mind before she said it).

My partner picked 23 because we read too many Illuminati books way back when…

Wife picked 57.

Clearly we are all unique.

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Apparently to maximize probabilities, you say “a number from 1 to 100, both digits are odd and both digits are different numbers” (so no 23 or 47 or whatever).

The main trick of the trick is, of course, to only show successful guesses on the TV show

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If the specification is simply “an odd number” then the ones digit must be 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9, but the tens digit may be anything but 0 (since 0 would not be written, and then the statement that digits must not be the same is meaningless). If the tens digit is odd, there are four possible ones digits (the other four odds); if the tens digit is even, there are five. That’s 5x4 + 4x5 = 20 + 20 = 40. I wouldn’t call 40 “very few”; it’s close to half the numbers in the stated range.

I think you’ve got the phrase. The specificity required to generate this miracle of mindreading really takes the magic out of the illusion! That’s why it’s always better to not know how ‘magic’ is done. Unless you’d like to do it yourself, which is twice as fun!

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It’s normally a number between 1 and 50, two digits, both odd and not equal. 13 is rarest, 37 commonest. See eg Psychological Forces

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That’s the phrase, your DuckDuckGo-Fu is better than mine

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First week of January blues today. As self-employed person I have to do end-of-year book keeping stuff and I should probably let an expert do that. But I am not and I keep making mistakes. Luckily for some reason today of all days I cleaned up my version control before I made mistakes and so was able to revert the changes that otherwise wouldn’t have been revertable. So yay for backups and now I have to do it all over yet again…

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I’m glad a got a decent payday before Christmas - I’ve just realised how many yearly payments (tv licence, car insurance etc) I have going out in January!

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Awkward experience at work. Remember that boss who called us baggage? He sent me a narky email at the end of the year saying that me not showing up to work had meant we had been unable to discuss who was getting the ax, and I should show up early this year. This despite the fact that I was saving him money by not showing up for work (due to how the government handout for businessess affected by covid-19 works).

So I did (and found a pile of several months’ work waiting for me that no-one had thought to mention), but it wasn’t until 15:30 ish that he called me over and asked why I still hadn’t answered. This in a small open-plan office about 3 metres from my colleague.

A bit of confusion later and I realized he wanted me to just say which of us was getting fired.

I had already talked it over with my colleague and established that she would prefer to be fired than do the job alone, and that I could say so.

He said she had until the 20th, and that was that.

Later, I signed off on her remaining paid leave, and said g’bye, because she no longer had any reason to turn up tomorrow.

The whole thing was just weird. I hate to think what would have happened if my colleague had wanted to keep the job.

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Christ. That is insane.

Does Japan not have laws that mean bosses can’t do that kind of thing?

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WTF?! I think he’s the one that should go, as he doesn’t even have the guts to make a decision or communicate it.

That is not a good work situation for you in any case now :confused: I hope you can figure a way forward.

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Holy cow, what a weird a creepy way to manage a team, although I guess it is not much of a team anymore.

I still can’t believe a company would shoot itself in the foot like that. Hopefully, your boss has higher up of his own that could potentially make some sense of this situation. In either case, I really wish you a lot of good luck, patience and bravery for the year to come!

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I think she’ll continue to be paid for 30 days to meet the legal requirements. I also think she could cause some real trouble if she fought the dismissal - I’ve heard he backed down from firing people in the past - so there are laws protection employees, they just aren’t called on often?

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