Excel Mind Reading Machine with VBA Macro Code

The Excel Mind Reading Machine program is simple on the surface. You simply choose letter A or B and the program tries to guess which letter you’ll pick.

While it’s not going to guess correctly anywhere close to 100% of the time, given a large enough sample size, the program will guess correctly a statistically significant portion of the time.

I tried to figure out how many times you would have to play to get a statistically significant sample size and I quickly got lost in the math – if you’re a statistician please let me know.

But if you play the maximum of 1,000 rounds that the program allows, it will guess correctly more than 50% of the time every time. It may not sound that impressive, but that kind of win rate in blackjack would make you the richest person in the world.

The program is based on the mind reading machine built by Claude Shannon in 1953. Shannon didn’t have the benefit of computers. He built an actual physical machine.

The idea is that humans are incapable of being random. And while computers are also incapable of being truly random, they are very good at picking up patterns. I’m sure with today’s AI and computer learning, an even better mind reading machine has already been built somewhere. But based on 1953 technology, it’s pretty remarkable.

The program works by looking for 8 different patterns of play. I won’t get into the specifics here as it would take away the fun of playing the game. If you know exactly how it works, you’ll obviously be able to beat it.

Once you’ve played a few times, take a look at the second tab to see the 8 patterns the machine looks for.

They say that the daily fluctuations of the stock market are completely random. I decided to put it to the test. I built a second program that uses the same logic as the mind reading machine to test whether the fluctuations in the stock market can be predicted.

Did it work? Well, let’s just say that I’m writing this from my office with 2 feet of snow outside and not from a tropical island.