[nestorD]

Fun fact: archaeological evidence on I Ching divinatory records shows an hexagram distribution different from the one produced by the yarrow stalk method. Meaning that, while it is now considered the traditional method, it was likely not the original approach.

[jackzhuo]

That's a really cool fact about the archaeology!

To be honest, my reason for picking this method was simple: I was reading a book about the I Ching that described the different ways to cast hexagrams.

The Yarrow Stalk method stood out to me because it felt more mysterious—in the past, it seemed like a secret method known only by a few experts.

Also, from a coding perspective, this algorithm was just much more interesting to build than a simple coin toss!

[z2]

Naive question: could this have been survivorship bias? Could certain ones not have been written down or kept with the others?

[nestorD]

I doubt it. The I Ching does not really have bad / low interest hexagrams. Also historians who studied the topic seem pretty sure that the yarrow stalk method is a recent introduction (by I Ching standards, we are talking about a bronze age divination tool...).