Derren Brown: 5 Best TV Specials and Secrets Of How They Were Done

4. The System

The Premise Derren Brown has a system to accurately predict the winning horse, would you bet your life savings on it?? How It Was Done The System took a different slant on perceptional manipulation. Following a lovely lady called Khadisha we saw how week-by-week she received an email detailing a winning horse, and every week the prediction was correct. What began as emails and small flutters became meetups and larger bets. Through positive persuasion, and the fact she had been given the correct winner 5 times in a row€”she bet £4000 on the sixth horse. This is the point at which Derren admitted there was no system, and that he had no idea which horse would win (after she had lost he made up for it by giving her a winning ticket). How had he predicted them right for the previous weeks?? Well, the first week he took 7776 people, split them into 6 groups and emailed each group a different winner. Then, the next week he€™d do the same with the winning group from last week. By the time the final week came he was left with Khadisha, a statistical certainty from his perspective, but incredible luck from hers. She was, of course, totally convinced by the system since from her point of view it totally worked which is why she happily bet her life saving on the horse. This €˜experiment€™ illustrates nicely how the perception of the person in the middle of things can vary wildly from other points of view. The effects here (called confirmation bias- confirming the truth based on flawed evidence) are commonly used to explain many people€™s belief in homeopathic medicine and Astrology.