Exercise 1: Why Seeing the Wheel Spin Makes the Result More Striking — Possible Solution
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If participants had been told the number 10 or 65 by an authority
figure (an expert, an official-looking source), a shift in their
estimates would be less surprising - it could be explained by a
separate, real bias (appeal to authority) rather than anchoring
specifically. A reader could reasonably object: "of course their
estimate shifted, they probably assumed the source knew something
relevant."

But in the real experiment, participants directly watched a wheel of
fortune spin and land on a number they could see was determined by
nothing more than physical momentum - no claimed expertise, no
implied relevance to African nations or the United Nations at all.
There was no plausible reason to think the number carried any real
information about the actual question being asked.

That's exactly why the result is so striking: the anchoring effect
worked even when the anchor was transparently, visibly irrelevant and
random. This rules out the alternative explanation that people were
rationally (if mistakenly) treating the number as a meaningful clue -
it shows the bias operates on a number's mere presence, not on any
believed relevance, which is a stronger and more unsettling finding
about how the mind actually works.

ANSWER: If the number came from an authority figure, the shift in
estimates could be explained by people rationally (if wrongly) treating
it as meaningful information. Because the number instead came from a
wheel participants could see was random, the study rules out that
explanation and shows anchoring works purely from a number's presence,
even when there's no rational reason to think it carries any real
information - a stronger, more surprising finding about how the bias
actually operates.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This explains the real methodological reason the study's specific
design (a visibly random wheel, not an authority figure) makes the
anchoring result more convincing, rather than just restating that the
study is impressive.