Okay, so the other day I was tinkering around, you know how it is. Got this idea stuck in my head about prediction stuff. Nothing fancy, just comparing a couple of ways to guess what comes next. Called it ‘wang vs dart’ mostly for laughs, really. No big science here, just me messing with things on my computer.
So, what I did was pretty basic. I just wanted to see if one simple guessing method was luckier than another. I set up a small test. Had a list of numbers, like 1, 0, 1, 1, 0… just random-ish stuff I typed out. The game was to predict the next number in the sequence.
For ‘wang’, my idea was simple: just look at the very last number and guess the same thing again. Yeah, I know, super basic, right? That’s ‘wang’ for you.
For ‘dart’, it was even dumber: just guess ‘1’ every single time. Like throwing a dart hoping to hit the bullseye without really aiming. Thought it would be funny to see how that stacked up.
First, I ran the ‘wang’ method. I went through my list, number by number. Look at the last one, make the prediction for the next spot. Wrote down if ‘wang’ got it right or wrong. It was kinda tedious, clicking through, checking. Sometimes it got it right, especially if there were repeating numbers. Other times, total miss. Felt kinda predictable, which I guess was the point of the method name, ha.
Then, it was ‘dart’s turn. This was quicker. Just predict ‘1’, check against the actual number, record hit or miss. Bam, bam, bam. Didn’t have to think much. Just kept guessing ‘1’. Obviously, it only worked when the actual next number was 1. Failed every time it was 0.
So, what happened?
Well, after running through my short list, I counted the scores. ‘Wang’ wasn’t amazing, but it did okay-ish when the sequence had streaks. ‘Dart’, the always-guess-‘1’ method, was surprisingly not terrible if the list happened to have more 1s than 0s. If it had more 0s, ‘dart’ would have bombed hard.
Neither was genius, obviously. It really depends on the data, doesn’t it? That’s the kicker. ‘Wang’ adapts a tiny bit, ‘dart’ just bets on one outcome.
- ‘Wang’: Looked at the last step. Simple logic.
- ‘Dart’: Just guessed ‘1’ always. No logic, pure bet.
Honestly, doing it felt a bit silly, but it passed the time.
So yeah, that was my little ‘wang vs dart’ experiment. Didn’t discover anything groundbreaking. Just confirmed that super simple prediction methods are… well, super simple. And super dependent on what you’re trying to predict. The ‘wang’ method felt slightly smarter, but ‘dart’ was faster to run through. It was just a hands-on way to see basic ideas in action, nothing more. Sometimes you just gotta try stuff out yourself, even the dumb ideas, to really see how they feel. That’s how I roll, anyway. Just sharing what I did.
