Predicting the direction of sound incorrectly? When i was sitting outside my house yesterday, I heard a strange sharp sound. I could not point out it's exact direction but apparently looked like coming from left but later my friend told me that an accident had occurred (due to which the strange sound came) and it totally came from different direction? How did this happen? Why can not our ears point out the exact direction of sound sometimes? 
 A: Your brain uses lots of tricks to try to localize the sound including comparing the timing between when your ears hear the sound as well as the various distortions your head and ear shapes reflect, refract, and attenuate the sound.  For example, if a sound is perfectly behind you, you can hear that it's behind you, not because of timing, but because your brain has gotten used to what distortion the sound pressure wave traveling through your head and the backs of your ears do to the sound.
The trouble is, sound reflects and refracts off more than just your ears and head.  If you heard the sound coming from a completely different direction than it actually came from, there is a good chance it bounced off of a building and came from a different direction relative to your head.  It could have also picked up distortions due to refraction and attenuation that are similar to the distortions your brain is looking for in its spacial localization.
The nature of perception is such that there is never going to be an exact, correct, perfect answer to your question.  Your brain was tricked.  There are too many ways it could have been tricked but the sound reflecting off of a building is probably the most likely one.
Wikipedia goes into some of the details of how your brain does sound localization.
