In this week's Nature: perfection in numbers?

19th century fairgoers were trying to win an ox by guessing its weight. According to this week's Nature, Darwin's half-cousin, who incidentally coined the term eugenics, kept track of their guesses...and was shocked to find that the final average equaled the exact weight of the ox. Apparently, this threw him into a tizzy and made him doubt his whole premise of eugenics.

A current TV show in Germany replicated this experiment using over 5,000 pieces of candy in a jar. They invited viewers to submit their guesses. Again, the average worked out to be the number of candies in the jar (off only about three pieces).