Last Thursday’s Amazing Race Asia was a relaxing episode. Contestants had fun while doing the tasks, and even though Mardy and Marsio were out, my favourite team (Andrew and Syeon) are still in, and they’re the top three. (Yay for alliteration here)

Of course, you don’t read about me blogging about the Amazing Race Asia, which I have been following since the start, so why today?

Simple. Because of Andrew’s dream. And randomness. And the matter of probability.

Right. So, I had too much time on my hands, so with cfgt’s help (he’s the statistics genius and actuary student), I wrote a little something in Excel’s VBA just to show that Andrew and Syeon had a lot of luck. Maybe not.

Here’s the lowdown for those who didn’t watch: There were 42 carriages in the Eye of Dubai (which pitifully copied the Eye of London, of which the Eye of Kuala Lumpur also pathetically copied), and in each of the 42 carriages, there were envelopes. However, only 5 of these envelopes are clues, while the others contain a message: “Sorry, Try Again”.

Andrew told Syeon (and us) that he had a dream, in it which he won the Amazing Race Asia, and it had a number - 19. So based on the dream, Andrew and Syeon picked carriage number 19 for their first carriage to explore, and lo and behold, they found the correct carriage with the clue.

Technically, there was a 5/42 chance (or 0.11904761) chance in getting a clue first. That would mean, that Andrew and Syeon, arriving at the Eye of Dubai, had that amount of chances to get a clue on the first try. Of which, they did get the clue on the first try.

Easy enough. But for us idle television watchers, for Andrew and Syeon to get it right on the first time in Carriage 19 is actually roughly a 1/250 (with a relatively large variance) chance. This means, if the round has to be played over and over again, the chances of us watching Andrew and Syeon get it right on the first time in Carriage 19 is 1 in every 218 times (Approximately). This is also, assuming that the producers of the show randomly distribute their clues, and is reset each time a new round begins.

What does this probability tell you? Nothing actually (except that you should just enjoy the show). It’s just for fun. Because I don’t have the number of times the other teams tried (the show is obviously edited), I can’t tell you more interesting or fun statistics.

Again, we come on to randomness. Steve Levitt once compared his iPod to the Kansas City Royals (a baseball team), in that both are completely random, even streaks, winning or losing. Was it completely random that Andrew and Syeon got to carriage 19, by chance of a dream?

About 4-5 years ago, I started a post in myPDAcafe, where I had asked participants to turn on their shuffle functions on their music players, and see if they can feel the next track. There were obviously some who were very helpful (such as Azxel and n305er - I never forget who helped me or who hurt me.), and out of random chances, seem to be able to predict the next track that was going to be played. The question then remained to me : Was it random? Does a person knows his playlist and player (digital randomness is based on a seed value in the processor) so well that he/she might be able to predict the next one? I have to go and find my old excel data (4 or 5 years is a millenia for digital files… plenty of hard drive crashes, reformats in between…) to recall further.

And what of Andrew’s seemingly random dream? Definitely his dream affected his decision. His dream also indicated what he had wanted - to win. Right from the start, they had always said that their aim was to win. So how did this random thing occur? Perhaps another post for that, on another day. But it was through his dream that he made the correct decision. Some say this was luck, others would say someone Up There wanted to help them. Bleh. There is always a simpler explanation.

Another random thing is that Mardy and Marsio seemingly always have vehicular problems, and Andrew and Syeon keep getting lousy drivers. Question is: how did the M&M Brothers end up in top 4, while Andrew and Syeon is probably going to win the Race?

Andy and Laura, whom on the whole seemed to have good luck and skills all the way till their elimination in India compared to the M&M Bros are struck by that critical ill-luck at that point of time in India . Lots of minor bad luck doesn’t add up to one single major bad luck. Sometimes the producers cut and paste the video in such a way that it seems that the M&M Bros’ misfortune seem worse than it is. Hence, the illusion that the Bros are always unlucky.

Although the Amazing Race Asia is pretty much balanced (as observed when some teams actually rose from last place to first place within the leg itself), there is always room for randomness. It occurs everywhere, from the very simple outliers in statistics to the Mandelbrot to the quantum butterfly. Random thoughts do pop up once and then without any pre-conditions. God does not play dice? I beg to differ. It plays dice, and huge big 20000 sided dice too

And… btw, here’s a random fact: This is the first time I’ve watched an Amazing Race (or any reality TV) consistently and not miss a single episode. It probably roots down to the fact that I had supported one team (Andrew and Syeon - I like their keep-head-low-and-aim-high attitude) from beginning till end. The other reality TV programs… I just don’t root for anyone, so I usually lose interest after say, oh, episode 3.

Ah, I bet you didn’t know as well, that this post was supposed to be written on Friday, but because of some prior engagement with my blog theme, and a Miss Javascript, I was unable to write it.. and got this post postponed to today

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