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Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{a|devil|}}Per {{author|Nicholas Nassim Taleb}}’s {{br|The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable}} You have a coin which, on the last 99 flips, had come up heads....") |
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{{a|devil|}}Per {{author|Nicholas | {{a|devil|}}Per {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}’s {{br|The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable}} You have a coin which, on the last 99 flips, had come up heads. Assume it is a fair coin. What is the probability of it coming up tails on the 100th flip? | ||
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The odds of a fair coin landing heads 99 times in a row is 0.5 * 10<sup>99</sup>, which is just shy of half a googol. If it takes ten minutes to flip a coin 100 times, it is likely to happen once in a period of several gazillion times the estimated life of the universe. So, the odds of a ''fair'' coin landing heads is, of course, 0.5. The odds that a coin which lands heads 99 times in a row *is fair* is as close to zero as doesn’t matter. | The odds of a fair coin landing heads 99 times in a row is 0.5 * 10<sup>99</sup>, which is just shy of half a googol. If it takes ten minutes to flip a coin 100 times, it is likely to happen once in a period of several gazillion times the estimated life of the universe. So, the odds of a ''fair'' coin landing heads is, of course, 0.5. The odds that a coin which lands heads 99 times in a row *is fair* is as close to zero as doesn’t matter. | ||
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*[[ | *[[Lentil convexity]] | ||
*[[Fat | *[[Fat tail]]s | ||
*[[In God we trust, all others must bring data]] | *[[In God we trust, all others must bring data]] | ||