Talk:Zener cards

message: In the Ghostbusters example, the term "negative reinforcement" is used in the non-technical (that is, incorrect) sense of "reinforcement that is bad" -- i.e., to refer to what is technically termed "punishment." "Negative reinforcement" properly refers to no enforcement at all, "negative" here meaning "none, nothing." Seinfeld capitalizes on this misunderstanding -- Geroge receives a "negative prognosis" and panics. He understanding "negative" to mean" "bad;" in medicine, however, as in science generally, "negative" means nothing, no cancer, for example, is present -- a negative prognosis is a good thing! The example ought to be changed so as not to be misleading and further "reinforce" this common misunderstanding.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joeletaylor (talk • contribs) 20:31, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: reinforcement -- "negative reinforcement" incorrectly used

message: This article's rather poor explanation of the law of averages/law of large numbers should be replaced with a link. -Smack 03:15, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: How is this explanation "poor"? If you didn't link it, what would you say instead? Wiwaxia 21:40, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  poor explanation of the law of averages/law of large numbers 

message: I've created an online experiment that utilizes zener cards to test for clairvoyance/precognition in a statistically meaningful manner; I plan to include a reference to it in this wikipedia article if there are no objections.  Also, the mathematics in this article is lacking, I (being a professional mathematician and Masters in Applied Mathematics) can correct it, also if there are no objections.  Let me know your thoughts.  Thank you.
-Scotopia 10:40, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematical analysis of clairvoyance using Zener Cards 

message: This article could use a lot of rewriting to balance out the POV, it seems to me. Particularly galling is how it throws about the Psi assumption (yeah, I plan to write an article on that soon. For now, see ). Basically, the problem is how it implies that any score over 20% would definately indicate Psi. Why Psi, and not God sending messages to the subject? For that matter, why not use it as evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is manipulating the cards with His Noodly Appendage?
Additionally, the statistical analysis is flawed. Zener cards are presented in decks of 25, with five of each card. With the predisposition of a subject to not guess the same card twice, the hit rate immediately rises to around 25%.
I'm putting the NPOV tag on this now to inform readers, but I'll try to get back to it and fix it myself. ---DrLeebot 15:05, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, any result far away from 20% is statistically improbable. A consistent score of 0% would indicate PSI powers as well.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rizzardi (talk • contribs) 10:36, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

text: I think the problem is that the card experiment itself is flawed. It probably requires a review and some research to find people debunking it though, as it is old. Its a good idea in theory, and a clever test, but it falls short as an experiment. No one has come along to fix it though :\ Titanium Dragon 00:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a perfectly valid experiment.  It test whether the subject is receiving information about the deck.  That's it.  You're right to say that there's no diagnosis of what that information is, nor what the source of that information is, but to say that it's not an experiment is to fundamentally misunderstand the scientific method. 02:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

text: I just added some stuff, needs more. Possibly should just be merged with the page this links from, as it seems to be largely the same thing. Titanium Dragon 01:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't see how the hit rate rises to about 25% as you say, if the person doesn't get any feedback on if they guessed correctly or not.  Secondly, it depends on how far above 20% it is in order to be significant, and that varies according to the number of tests (and assumes that they are done correctly).  Bubba73 (talk), 01:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text:  OK, finite size of the deck affects it. No that only helps if they are given feedback along the way.  Bubba73 (talk), 02:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV issues with Psi Assumptions 

message: Should a short explanation of psi present and psi missing be included in this article? (i.e. low scores also indicate a possible existence of psi) or should that be confined to articles on general explanations on research? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.159.114.88 (talk) 14:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Psi_hit has its own stub. It might overwelm this short article to explain such concepts here, but it certainly seems relevant. Perhapse this article could benefit from a "See Also" section, referring the curious reader to such related topics as Psi missing, Probability, Sheep-Goat effect, and Statistical_significance?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.31.212 (talk) 13:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Psi present/missing 

message: Aren't there 2 N's in the word Zener, and not one? SmileToday☺(talk to me , My edits) 20:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've redirected Zenner Card to here, so that is no longer a problem. SmileToday☺(talk to me , My edits) 19:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But the article is still not consistent. The title says Zener, the lead says Zenner and the rest of the article flip-flops. Surely it cannot be that hard to figure out if Karl's last name is Zener or Zenner? Shinobu (talk) 07:55, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two N's? 

message: Just curious if there is any better/worse statistics if each card was a different color? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 00:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any testing with colored cards? 

message: Has somebody devised alternate uses for Zener cards?
Such as playing cards?
--Error (talk) 22:45, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other uses 

message: Zener cards are also known as Rhine cards —Shouldn't there be a redirect? 67.243.186.3 (talk) 05:48, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 14:43, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zener cards also known as Rhine cards —Redirect? 

message: Need a bit of work here, especially regarding an impartial skeptical perspective. Material gathering begins for me now. I would, of course, enjoy help and suggestions and concerns and etc... her and on my talk page.
Will likely be sandboxed as a copy of the article and rewritten in parts, rearranged in others, and hopefully substantially added to. Cheers.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 14:30, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Since I'm working this off page I will be watching here in order to incorporate any changes made to the current article in between now and when am ready to paste in the work.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 14:39, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Will shortly begin replacing the article with my re-work. I will do it in stages so that the changes I made are clearer than they would be if I did a wholesale paste over.
#I refreshed references and added language where appropriate.
#Rewrote sections for clarity.
#Added several citations to clarify criticism, especially the statistics section.
Given the age of the topic and it's largely dead-in-the-water nature there is not a lot of super current stuff out there on it. I did what I could and hopefully it'll spur some activity and people can expand/revise to create an ever better piece of work.  Cheers.Rap Chart Mike (talk) 15:28, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV work 

message: Guessing 20 out of 25 has a probability of about 1 in 5 billion.
Guessing all 25 correct has a chance of (.2) = 3.3 x 10, or about 1 in 300 quadrillion.
Numbers look strangely formatted, as if exponents were missing. The formula in the picture in the source article where this was taken from also looks as if it had missing parts.
Also probabilities look as if 25 cards were drawn from infinite deck, not of a permutation of a finite desk.
For permutation I get P = 1/623360743125120, which is much lower.
Update: now I see that the section talks about a test with 25 one-in-five questions, not about a deck of 25 cards, which is what the article is about. Isn't this misleading?
_Vi (talk) 11:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange probabilities