Thought Experiment - Coin Flip

250Rocket

250Rocket

Well-known member
You're given a coin and asked to flip it and record the results. You flip it once, comes up heads, flip it twice, heads again. You keep flipping and it always lands on heads.

At what point do you:

1) Ask yourself what are the odds
2) Question if the coin is weighted
3) Conclude the coin is rigged without being able to test the coin by other means
 
0) Forget everything else resorting to snorting condoms, downing Tide pods, and ranting about how you parents don't know how to use a fucking democracy
 
Xenu.jpg
 
En faite la probabilité d'avoir face ou pile retombe a zéro a chaque fois.

La pluspart du monde vont se dire '' ca fait 4x j'ai pile de suite, j'ai plus de chance d'avoir une face la prochaine fois''

NON

C'est comme les machines a sous. La probabilité d'avoir une séquence payante 'reset' a chaque donne. Au volume tu finis par avoir des gains mais la probabilité de gain n'augmente pas en jouant a répétition.
 
-Mike- said:
En faite la probabilité d'avoir face ou pile retombe a zéro a chaque fois.

La pluspart du monde vont se dire '' ca fait 4x j'ai pile de suite, j'ai plus de chance d'avoir une face la prochaine fois''

NON

C'est comme les machines a sous. La probabilité d'avoir une séquence payante 'reset' a chaque donne. Au volume tu finis par avoir des gains mais la probabilité de gain n'augmente pas en jouant a répétition.
Click to expand...

If you look at each flip independently, you're right, the probability is 50/50 every single time no matter what happened in the past flips. However, the probability of landing on the same side is 1/(2^x) where x is the number of flips. 10 heads in a row is a 1 in 1024 chance. 20 Heads in a row is 1 in about 1.05 million.

So I ask again, you are handed a coin and from the first flip you start getting only heads, at how many tosses do you:

1) Ask yourself what are the odds
2) Question if the coin is weighted
3) Conclude the coin is rigged without being able to test the coin by other means
 
Without putting much thought into this, I think mathematically speaking, you could never prove that the coin is rigged as the probability of only getting heads or tail in a sequence of tosses for a 50/50 coin only asymptotically converges to 0. So then its all about setting thresholds for a) when you start questioning the game is rigged and b) conclude its rigged. Its about your reputation to affirm a statement without definitive proof.
 
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