The big counter.
Without talking and without setting an order, can everyone in the room press the same button without colliding and take the counter all the way to the end?
Original study
- Néda, Z., Ravasz, E., Brechet, Y., Vicsek, T., & Barabási, A.-L. (2000). The sound of many hands clapping. Nature, 403(6772), 849–850. Source
- Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P., Englert, C., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T., Hoymann, G., Rossano, F., de Ruiter, J. P., Yoon, K.-E., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(26), 10587–10592. Source
- Kearns, M., Suri, S., & Montfort, N. (2006). An experimental study of the coloring problem on human subject networks. Science, 313(5788), 824–827. Source
- Couzin, I. D., Krause, J., Franks, N. R., & Levin, S. A. (2005). Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move. Nature, 433(7025), 513–516. Source
- Abramson, N. (1970). The ALOHA system: Another alternative for computer communications. In Proceedings of the November 17–19, 1970, Fall Joint Computer Conference (AFIPS '70 Fall) (pp. 281–285). ACM. Source
- Arechar, A. A., Gächter, S., & Molleman, L. (2018). Conducting interactive experiments online. Experimental Economics, 21(1), 99–131. Source
Our adaptation
An exploratory experiment on collective counting without turn-taking (there is no published original task; it is inspired by the spontaneous synchronization study of Néda et al., 2000). Everyone in the room presses a single button trying to bring the counter from 0 to the room size; each person may press once per attempt, and there is no chat or player list. If two presses are less than 1,000 ms apart on the server clock, they collide and the counter resets. Public rooms start with 50 people and a game lasts at most 240 seconds.
Differences from the original study
- There is no published benchmark to compare with.
- Connection latency differs between people; a player may have pressed before the counter had advanced on their screen.
- Room size varies between rooms.
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 |
|---|---|---|
group_id | group code | Room code: links rows from the same room; regenerated at random in every release. |
group_size | integer | Number of players in the room. |
points | number | Player's points. |
best | integer | Highest count the room reached. |
success | 0 | 1 | Whether the room reached the target (1 = yes). |
collisions | integer | Number of collisions in the room. |
attempts | integer | Number of attempts in the room. |
target | integer | Target count (follows the number of connected players during the game). |
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
Answers to this experiment are never accepted from the browser; they are written on the server from the room's action records only when the room ends.
- 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 highest count reached by room size.
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.