Spooky FMR….

Sometimes I like harking back to an ‘oldie but goodie’ that, just perhaps, there are enough newbies around by now to have missed it.  Over 4 years ago I first learned (via Fawn Nguyen) of the “Flash Mind Reader” from Andy Wolf, formerly Andy Naughton (though it had been around since 2002) and ever since it’s remained a favorite puzzle-of-sorts to me (it makes a certain always-accurate prediction after you randomly select a 2-digit integer). What I love is its ultimate utter simplicity while, like a great sleight-of-hand magic trick, creating wonder from basic distraction.

You can visit it here (and will need ‘flash’ installed to play it):

http://www.mandrgames.com/flashmindreader.htm

This is especially fun to show young people… or, any of us who are young-at-heart! ;)

I last wrote about it on the blog here:

https://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2014/12/deja-vu-revisiting-flash-mind-reader.html

[the link I give to the puzzle there no longer works though; and my first mention of the puzzle, by the way, was HERE.]]

The only little bit of backstory I've ever found on this wonderful piece of legerdemain is here:
http://www.wolfman.ltd/portfolio-items/the-original-flash-mind-reader/
And so far as I know, Andy Wolf(e) still works for Wolfman Ltd. as a freelance digital designer.(I've tried to make contact with him without success.)

For any who need an explanation of how it works there are plenty available on the Web (including on YouTube), just google “Flash Mind Reader,” so I won't give a 'spoiler' here.

[...I will say some do a much better job of explaining it than others, and it is the sort of puzzle Presh Talwalkar does a great job of explaining, so I was sorry to see that, as best I can tell, he’s never tackled it on his “Mind Your Decisions” site. Hey Presh, this seems right up your alley!]

Deja Vu: Revisiting The Flash Mind Reader

About 9 months ago, in a tweet, math teacher Fawn Nguyen casually mentioned "The Flash Mind Reader," a delightful Web-based puzzle, that I was unfamiliar with, though she apparently has known of it for close to a dozen years. Go here to check it out, if perchance you've not seen it:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~dodis/magic-ball.swf

What a great game/puzzle for younguns, but it also stumped me for awhile before I figured it out, and wrote a post alluding to it. So I was delighted to be reading "The Best Writing On Mathematics 2014" recently and come upon this great teaser once again (pgs. 171-5). It comes up in a selection aptly entitled "Wondering About Wonder In Mathematics" by Dov and Rina Zazkis.  It's one of my favorites of many great selections in this year's anthology. The authors pinpoint "surprise" as the underlying component of "wonder" in mathematics, and then list four types of "mathematical surprise":

1) perceived "magic"
2) counterintuitive results
3) variation on a known result or procedure
4) paradoxes

"The Flash Mind Reader" falls under the 'perceived magic' category, and they write this about it:

"We have used this activity [the Mind Reader] several times with both elementary school and university students. It's not uncommon for members of both groups to try to cover the webcams on their computers or face away from the screen, as if the Mind Reader was determining what number was in their head using some elaborate eye-tracking mechanism. Obviously, these actions do not prevent the Mind Reader from working.  However, these reactions serve both to illustrate some rudimentary theory testing -- 'Is this website tapping into the webcam?' -- and to demonstrate students' need to understand how this 'Mind Reader' works, which is catalyzed by their curiosity."

I'm heartened to know that university students can be as duped by this little gem as I was at first blush ;-) Of course a lot of number and card tricks are based on pure mathematics; in some ways, Flash Mind Reader takes the element of 'distraction,' which is often a component of such "magic," to another subtle level, which helps make it so effective. [In the event you don't see how the puzzle works, you'll have to buy the book, or google for the answer, I won't give it away here!]
The rest of the chapter looks at some other classic and interesting examples from mathematics, placing them in the four categories above. The Mandelbrot set, Platonic solids, the Monty Hall problem, and Simpson's paradox, are among standards mentioned in the chapter.

Anyway, I encourage folks to get a hold of this year's "Best Writing On Mathematics," as I think it the best edition yet (and unfortunately most expensive) of a series that I hope maintains interest and support. It was recently reviewed by Alexander Bogomolny:  http://tinyurl.com/p28acrz
[I included it on my recent list of books for the Holidays at MathTango.]


On a sidenote, thinking there might be some interesting back-story here, I attempted to find information about web designer Andy Naughton, who created The Flash Mind Reader, to include in this post, and was surprised that though his name and the game are found MANY times in Google searches, I couldn't actually find any background info on him... is he alive??? is he very private? Is Naughton his real name (both "Andy Naughton" and "Andy Wolfe" seem to be associated with "FlashLight Creative" -- are they 2 different people or one-and-the-same?) Is there some mystery to all this? Does anyone happen to know much about the fellow?  Just curious what the history to the Mind Reader might be, and how, if at all, its success affected Andy's life??? (...if I could locate him, and he was willing, I might be interested in doing one of my Math-Frolic interviews with him, as well). ...maybe if I just hone my own mind-reading skills I can find him.