[fxm4139]

The timing of this post is a coincidence because I just did the "status game" this past weekend at my improv class. It's a fun insightful game and Amir is spot on about the fact that we are always playing this game. In fact, we were in a class with 12 people, and after walking and interacting around the room (while only knowing the numbers of everyone but yourself on the forehead), the instructor asked us to arrange ourselves in ascending order in a line. It was amazing how almost everyone knew where exactly they were with respect to everyone else (especially when a #5 and a #6 interact, its hard to figure out if you are the superior or not, but the subtleties do tell quite a bit). Both times we did the exercise, only one person was out of place, and that too, they were right next to each other.

Like mindcrime says, there is quite a bit of wisdom in improv. I enrolled in classes because I wanted something very different to break up my usual routine that mostly involves writing code. What was really enlightening to me was that most of improv was not about being funny, but really about the fundamentals of how to communiciate and convey something to a fellow improviser as well as the audience, in the least amount of time (short scenes).

[zby]

How could exactly one person be out of order? If one person is out of order he occupies other persons place - so that other person has to be out of order as well. Am I missing something?

[RickHull]

1, 2, 3, 5, 4

Arguably only the 5 (or the 4) is out of order. Simply remove it and order is maintained.

[pavel_lishin]

> Both times we did the exercise, only one person was out of place, and that too, they were right next to each other.

Were they on the very top, or very bottom?