BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): the sieve of chance

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Sort of the Byron the Bulb issue: is the long-burning bulb asserting it's will, magical, technologically-tampered or just sitting comfortably at the outermost extremes of the bell curve?

Laura

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID

Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

>>But once it *has* settled...
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>That's the crux, and a starting point for a fascinating (some other time) excursus into Bayesian probability. We do much more anthropomorphizing and projection than we know, and a some level we'll always feel that the roulette ball has a memory and "knows" it should start evening things out by settling on red. That feeling grows much faster than the unlikelihood of any given run of black does -- which is why more players flocked to make ever larger bets on red, and overall the casino did very well that night.
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>> It would have been the same probability even if the ball at that point had settled on black for a few million times in a row, no?
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>Yes -- aside from the likelihood that you would long since have concluded the wheel must be rigged :-)
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>On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
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> Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
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>P. 56:
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>“But squares that have already* had* several hits, I mean—”
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>“I’m sorry. That’s the Monte Carlo Fallacy..."
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>I look at it like this: It is highly unlikely that the roulette ball settles on black for 26 times in a row. But once it *has* settled on black for 26 times in a row, the probability for it to do so again with the next spin of the wheel is the same as before (48.6 per cent, that is).
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>At least that's how I explain it to the kids...
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>Where the bettors went wrong was that 26 spins of a roulette wheel simply isn't that large a number. 
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>Hmmm. It would have been the same probability even if the ball at that point had settled on black for a few million times in a row, no?
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