Head Tale

I used to love any sort of riddles, word games, math puzzles and the like when I was younger.  So when  I came across this one on Reddit tonight and it brought back my childhood.  (Er, that is if my childhood was spent trying to figure out how to time the stock market perfectly!)

My guess for this question was one whole number lower than the average guess of the 1000 economists surveyed which you'll learn when you click on the link below. 

So now I'll break to let you read the question and click through to the puzzle for an explanation of how the 1000 economists guessed…

1000
professional investors asked to pick a number between 0-100. The person who is
closest to the number which is 2/3 of the average number provided will
win. What number do you choose? Answer beautifully illustrates the
difficulties with the Efficient Market Hypothesis.














It's interesting that the average guess turned out to be only halfway there (I thought I was all the way!) in that, if you then take 2/3 of that average answer, you get a number that only 3 people out of 1000 picked! 

This still isn't the “right” answer anyhow, only the most common answer, at least according to the top comment in the Reddit thread, which attempts to explain some of the logic behind people's different guesses.


I especially love that some people picked numbers higher than 67 which
should be the ceiling for answers when the conditions are to pick a
number that is 2/3 of a range of guesses between 0-100.  Professional economists made this mistake.  Man, no wonder there's a recession going on!  ) 


Anyhow, click through and hopefully this will all make sense.

(Oh, and in case I was being too cryptic above, I guessed 25 but should've guessed 17 which is 2/3 of what I picked as my final answer and although, not the right answer (that would be 0), it's the “right” guess if you were trying to pick
closest to the average of all the other guesses.)