Derren Brown – An explanation

Discussion is still ongoing after Derren Brown predicted the National Lottery results last Wednesday. Most of us were waiting to see Friday night’s show where Brown promised to show us how he did it.

On Wednesday, Brown predicted all six numbers in the National Lottery draw. He wrote down his predictions on a line of balls and kept them in camera shot while the Lottery draw took place, and then revealed them one by one to the astonishment of the viewers.

In the Friday show, he described how he had predicted the numbers by “putting our heads together”. He claimed he had a panel of twenty four people who wrote down their predictions after studying numbers that had been drawn the previous year. He then added up all the numbers and divided the numbers by twenty four to come up with an average guess. The team practiced the method again and again, the first time they tried, they only managed to predict one number but by the time of the draw on Wednesday they had honed their technique to get all six numbers correct.

Brown claims the averaging technique really works but is this just another illusion?