Identifying Your Father

[prohornblower]

Let's say you are a 25 year old adult, who was raised by your mother. You never met your dad.

Let's say you get to monitor a room full of 20 random adult males for as long as you like. This monitoring involves the ability to hear everything that is said, and see everything that is done. The 20 random adult males do not know of you, or that they are even being monitored. Assume they act completely natural all things considered.

How long would it take you to be able to identify your father (that you've never met)? Assuming what you know of your mother and of yourself...how long would this process take?

Assume the room is full of the appropriate race in question. Say if you are mixed-race, you would be aware of your fathers race, and the room would be full of nothing but.

But all other things...hair color, eye color, height, weight...etc..would be completely random.

If it wouldn't take long to figure out from 20, what about 50 guys?

[godBoy]

I think the only resemblances would be physical if there were any. The other traits like personality I imagine would come about by mixing with the person - so I wouldn't expect my father to be similar in that respect.

Obviously it depends but I think it's possible I could come up with my father out of 20 in 5 minutes.
50 => 15mins

[MaxWeiss]

You know that he's in there to begin with though, for sure??

[yukoncpa]

Well this is a true story here in Idaho. I knew a struggling 19 year old kid who had never met his dad - his mother had died recently, but he saw a fellow on t.v. who looked exactly like him. I hadn’t seen the spot myself. But the kid set up a meeting at a country club with this guy and brought me along. Out of the 50 or so fellows in the club, I, within 10 seconds picked out a guy that looked like my friend and sure enough this was the fellow on t.v. We went over and sat by him and had a chat. As it turned out, the man agreed with my friend almost immediately that he was his dad and they and I had a great conversation at this club. The two of them seriously looked like clones. It was a fun encounter. Unfortunately a few days later, this very wealthy man died ( this was the days before DNA testing ). All I could think of was how my friend was gypped out of a substantial inheritance. My friend actually did worry for a while about the same thing, but ultimately, sans inheritance, he was happy that he was able to meet his dad just before his dad’s death.

[prohornblower]

[ QUOTE ]
You know that he's in there to begin with though, for sure??

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely.

[alphatmw]

why are you defining this by a time frame? you could be given 1 year of observation, then still guess wrong.

[AlexM]

It would be impossible IMO.

[prohornblower]

[ QUOTE ]
why are you defining this by a time frame? you could be given 1 year of observation, then still guess wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is the point. Say you get 1 guess, and your life depends on it.

How long would you have to take to guess? Obv. the longer you wait to guess, the longer you live, but your life consists of sitting in a room all day observing people.

As you weed people out, you can eliminate them from the room, if this would make it easier to observe.

[latefordinner]

I was adopted at birth and tracked down my birthmother when I was 18. She later put me in touch with my birthfather. I am near 100% sure that I could never have picked him out of multiple people just by observing with any degree of certainty.

[chezlaw]

Really interesting question. Apart from the obvious different racial types I guess this would be very difficult but I dunno.

I've never seen much similarity between me now and my dad now but I as I get older I can see the similarity between me now and how I remember my dad 30 years ago. I also sense a convergence happening.

chez