Looking outside of the window

With my daughter, we play a game. We look outside of our apartment’s window, on the street. We try to guess the color of the next car that will cross in front of us. We aren’t allowed to consider cars that are already visible.

I know the optimal strategy is to always pick the same color.

I know I can look up online to find the distribution of colors.

I know I can create a simple Bayesian model on my mind and update it based on the cars we see, so I can incorporate local knowledge.

I know that it is not the models that fail to give me an answer, but the models I was taught glossed over on how I pick my utility function. I can adjust them to give me an answer that also incorporate the excitement of randomness. But that’s not why we play.

Because all of that is arbitrary and an excuse to play. We just want to play a game with my daughter and see her smile or happy despite the argument on whether the car was white or grey. That’s why we play.

Blue. Orange. Red.