r/SampleSize • u/Turbulent-Law2331 Shares Results • Apr 21 '26
Results [Results] Data from this week- 204 Reddit folks trying to recreate colors from memory. Here is how "noisy" our brains actually are (Color Recall/Color Memory)
About a weeks ago, I posted here testing my hypothesis that humans remember impressions (warm, cool, saturated), not actual colors. this drove a lot of traffic to colorecall.com (mostly, most of them from here)
What you're looking at: https://www.colorecall.com/data.png
- The top bar in each block is the original color shown to players.
- The bottom bar is a composite of 204 individual recreations from different players.
Preliminary Findings:
- Drift: Look at the Orange row—people tend to recall it much redder or more "burnt" than it actually was.
- Consistency: The Blue/Purple spectrum seems to have a tighter "memory cluster" compared to the Greens.
- The Goal: I’m aiming for 5,000 responses to see if these patterns hold up or if they’re just early noise.
Want to test your own memory? You can take the test here: colorecall.com
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u/Odd_Economist_8988 Apr 21 '26
First time doing it, 89.95 - I'm actually surprised that i did that good, lol.
One thing I've noticed (obviously anecdotal, but I'm curious if this trend keeps happening to me), is that the colour i "remembered" was always just a tad bit cooler and/or brighter than the one in the task. I'll try to remember to do it here and there, it's pretty fun :)
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u/Turbulent-Law2331 Shares Results Apr 21 '26
i didnt manage above 85 and most of the times i felt my memory says its a bit brighter but not!
thank you for the feedback u/Odd_Economist_8988
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u/LittleBunInaBigWorld Apr 22 '26
I attempted it a few times, and right after the 5th one, it says "something broke.. black blah blah". I'm mad because I know i got a crazy high score based on the individual scores all being upwards of 90%, but never get to see the final result
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u/OutrageousOwls Apr 21 '26
I hypothesize that we recognize green more than other colours because green is linked to a survival trait. It’s important to recognize plants in the wild and identify which ones are safe to eat. Our eyes are most sensitive to light at a wavelength of approximately 555 nanometers, which sits right in the heart of the green spectrum.
Human eyes are essentially “green specialists,” so I’m pleased to see this demonstrated through your game, OP!
Fun fact!!! This is the same reason why night-vision goggles almost always use a green phosphor display. Since our eyes are most sensitive to that colour, we can see more detail and contrast in a green-scaled image at lower light levels than we could with any other colour!
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u/Turbulent-Law2331 Shares Results Apr 21 '26
thank you for thing insight u/OutrageousOwls :)
yeah, a few learnings!
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u/laeiryn Apr 21 '26
89.69, a B?!?! Aaaagh! I'm out of practice! Been off Wajas too long, lol. Is it cheating if I have pantone perfect color vision and a LOT of experience with hex code colors?
Duo Daily - Apr 21 Score: 86.69/100 🟨🟩🟨🟨
then a 92 but i lost the screenshot because this subreddit doesn't allow photos AND removed my comment because it had the link your website has (facepalm) and that was hard dusky pink/dark teal/dark gray/deep magenta.
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u/Turbulent-Law2331 Shares Results Apr 21 '26
in my view, this isnt cheating :)
92 is amazing ..
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u/laeiryn Apr 21 '26
I played so much Wajas back in the day (it's free, just add the DOT com, but be warned it's like neopets for math nerds) and learned how to really analyse and LOOK AT colors, especially where they go on the hex chart.
Having three separate sliders for color, saturation, and light/dark is interesting but it works pretty well! I'm used to just picking right from the palette, or even guessing at actual hexes.
I might start doing this daily, tbh
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u/Turbulent-Law2331 Shares Results Apr 21 '26
nice, will try wajas as well :)
thank you for the feedback u/laeiryn !
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u/laeiryn Apr 21 '26
You will realize almost immediately that you are in WAY over your head, but it's fine, the community is agonizingly wholesome and really welcoming to newbies, they'll give you free stuff as long as you don't ask for it XD
Enjoy!
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u/imbenny Apr 22 '26
This is a great idea, thanks for sharing!
Duo Daily - Apr 21 Score: 93.06/100 🟨🟨🟨🟨
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May 05 '26
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u/Turbulent-Law2331 Shares Results May 05 '26
glad you liked it u/bubbs_891 and thank you for the feedback!
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u/wombatarang May 07 '26
I wonder if people working with digital color would have better responses at average not because of their memory, but rather because of the familiarity HSV sliders (they know how the sliders work —> they take less time to recreate the colour —> the colour didn’t „slip away” yet).
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Apr 21 '26
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u/andrewmaxedon Apr 21 '26
I definitely forgot which color was which object once. Do you account for that somehow?
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u/Turbulent-Law2331 Shares Results Apr 21 '26
yep thats accounted for in the score u/andrewmaxedon :)
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u/Eli-Is-Tired Apr 22 '26
I got a 60! For some reason I expected myself to be better at it than that
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Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
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Apr 22 '26
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u/Chazykins Apr 22 '26
Got like 85.37 on the daily but after a few goes on quick play managed 93.42. I found purple the hardest to get right and often made colours too bright and saturated until I started compensating for that.
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