Cold Reading - Other Techniques

Other Techniques

According to James Underdown from CFI and IIG "In the context of a studio audience full of people, cold reading is not very impressive." Underdown explains cold-reading from a mathematical viewpoint. A typical studio audience consists of approximately 200 people, divided up into 3 sections. A conservative estimate assumes each person knows 150 people. When a psychic asks the question "Who's Margaret?" he is hoping there is a Margaret in the 10,000 people in the database of that section. If there is no answer, they open the question up to the whole audience's database of over 30,000 people! Would it be surprising for there to be a dozen Margarets in such a large sample?"

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