THE VIDEO SHELF · human randomness bias
Why is this number everywhere?
Veritasium explores why the number 37 turns up so often, drawing on Tom Magliery's collection of 37 sightings and a poll of about 200,000 people asked to pick a random number. It covers how humans choose numbers and why 37 stands out.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN cites it in LLM randomness and number-picking threads as evidence that humans are also biased and predictable when asked for random numbers.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Veritasium
- Topic
- human randomness bias
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 11
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2024–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Probably posted because of this video: [VIDEO] Which not only links to this website, but also explains the topic in detail. Can highly recommend the channel anyway — especially for the HN crowd.
golergka on Hacker News · 2024-03
In Thirty SevenDerek Muller did a good overview of this concept on his Veritasium channel: [VIDEO] . Even more interesting for HN is a link in the description to one of the speaker's (Tom Magliery) websites: [LINK] .
mitch_f on Hacker News · 2025-08
In The Ski Rental Problem
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.