Just a Statistical Experiment…
Disclaimer: not mine.
Charlie stopped his furious writing and stepped back from the board to get an overview of his calculations, three hours and nineteen minutes of data analysis and he was still getting nowhere! He'd really hit one hell of an obstacle.
"Professor?" Amita's voice brought his mind back to reality and his office again, and he ran his hand through his hair for the thirty-fifth time since lunch, an unmistakable sign of deep and utter frustration.
"Amita," he acknowledged, gesturing for her to come in, but keeping his eyes on the board with vain hopes he might find the answer staring him right in the face. "I'm sorry, I looked through your abstract again and you're missing out on a few things. My notes are on the desk."
He could hear her walk up to his desk, but where there should've been the whisking sound of papers handled by gentle fingers there was only silence. Charlie glanced back at her, looking at his student for the first time that day; she was looking pointedly at him, then down at his desk, or rather the sea of papers between the two mathematicians.
"As big a fan as I am of the CalSci-camouflage trend you've got going here, I'm thinking binders might be a good investment."
"B- binders?" Charlie stuttered, unintentionally. "No, no really, I find my way around much better without them."
Amita shrugged in response, lifting a few papers to have a peek. "Oh," she said when she came across his bowl of gumballs. "Can I have one?"
"Go right ahead," Charlie smiled, turning to open the drawer in his desk, revealing his Gumball Scoreboard. Just as he was about to ask which one she picked, he looked up to see her reach into the bowl with her eyes firmly shut. The look on her face was that of utter concentration and Charlie found himself staring at the way her fingers hovered just above the gumballs for a moment, flexing slightly, before descending on one. She didn't even look at the blue ball in her hand before popping it in her mouth; her eyes opened to see Charlie's fascinated face
"What?" she asked he kept staring at her.
"People usually don't do that," Charlie remarked, opening another drawer to grab another notebook and a pen, writing numbers like normal people would write brainstorm ideas.
"Do what?" Amita asked, chuckling slightly at his curious behavior. "What did I do?"
"You picked a ball at random, even closing your eyes to make sure of it, most people have a color they favor, they pick it deliberately, or at least look at it before eating it. You didn't."
"No…" Amita said, uncertain whether he was reprimanding her or just stating the obvious as usual.
"I've been trying to track if there's a color that's more popular than the others by gathering data, you know, sampling without replacement, but if you pick one at complete random, I have to start working on a new set of data in order to…"
"Red," Amita said, cutting him off completely from his thoughts.
"What?" Charlie asked, perplexed. Amita smiled, grabbed a pen on her way up to him and started writing numbers on the notepad he was holding.
"I did a similar experiment in high school," she said, glancing up at him happily. "Only I used M&Ms instead of gumballs, it was cheaper. Red is the most popular color."
"Are you sure?" Charlie asked with just a little too much skepticism in his voice, Amita scowled at him. "I mean, there are a lot of variables to consider, just imagine if…"
"Charlie," Amita interrupted him for the second time, placing the pen on the notebook and then taking the notebook from him to set it down on the table. "It's just a statistical experiment. I promise the next time I take a gumball, I'll choose one properly, but for now, don't we have more important things to do?"
Charlie looked at her for a moment, she was right of course; still, he couldn't just drop it, could he? It was more than an anomaly, right? It was a change in the pattern…
On the other hand, the way she looked at him made even the three-hour data analysis feel strangely… unimportant.