The first number that comes to mind.
Type the first number between 1 and 100 that comes to mind.
Original study
- Kubovy, M., & Psotka, J. (1976). The predominance of seven and the apparent spontaneity of numerical choices. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2(2), 291–294. Source
- Simon, W. E. (1971). Number and color responses of some college students: Preliminary evidence for a "blue seven phenomenon". Perceptual and Motor Skills, 33(2), 373–374. Source
- Veritasium [D. Muller] (2024, Mart). Why is this number everywhere? [Video]. YouTube. Source
- Knowles, P. L. (1977). The "blue seven" is not a phenomenon. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 45(2), 648–650. Source
- Östling, R., Wang, J. T.-y., Chou, E. Y., & Camerer, C. F. (2011). Testing game theory in the field: Swedish LUPI lottery games. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 3(3), 1–33. Source
- Mehta, J., Starmer, C., & Sugden, R. (1994). The nature of salience: An experimental investigation of pure coordination games. American Economic Review, 84(3), 658–673. Source
Our adaptation
A written, four-round adaptation of Kubovy and Psotka's (1976) 'first number that comes to mind' task. Round 1 asks for a whole number from 1 to 100 (the wording is fixed and no example number is ever shown); round 2 asks for a first number from 1 to 10, round 3 for the number the participant thinks the fewest people will pick, and round 4 for a guess of the crowd's most frequent round-1 number. The crowd distribution is shown only after answering.
Differences from the original study
- The number is typed, not spoken; it is not directly comparable with the spoken answers of the original studies.
- The original asked for 0–9; our single-digit round uses 1–10.
- Rounds follow each other for the same person, so an earlier round may influence a later one.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
n | integer | Round 1: first number between 1 and 100 that comes to mind (main measure; validated on the server). |
n10 | integer | Round 2: first number between 1 and 10 that comes to mind. |
least | integer | Round 3: the number the participant thinks the fewest people will choose (1–100). |
guess_top | integer | Round 4: guess of the crowd's most frequent round-1 number (1–100). |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
The server accepts only whole numbers from 1 to 100; anything else is rejected. Values from the extra rounds are collected in the browser and only reduced to a safe form on the server (numeric type and magnitude bounds); we recommend removing out-of-range values in analysis. We also recommend reporting culturally marked numbers such as 1, 100, 42 and 69 separately.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
This experiment has no leaderboard score. The crowd result is the share (%) of each number and the most frequent numbers.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.