I know, 50/50 heads tails right? But help me understand the next step – each coin flip has a 50/50 shot of heads or tails. What I don’t understand is how the likelihood of the next flip doesn’t change. For example if I flipped a coin 10 times and every time it flipped heads, the next flip would be 50/50 tails. Wouldn’t the likelihood of flipping a coin 11 times and having it be heads every time be really low? 0.5^11 = 0.048%?
Here’s the origin of the question. I was at a roulette table and the guy said “it’s been black the last 8 rolls, the next one has to be red.” At first I thought, the next roll will be ~47% black, ~47 red, ~6% 0 or 00 you fucking imbecile. Then I thought to myself, what are the chances that there are no red rolls in 9 rolls, which is well below 1%.
Am I the imbecile?
In: 215
The past does not influence the future.
The odds of a coin toss coming up heads is 50% and coming up tails is 50% for each time you toss it.
If you toss a coin 9 times and get 9 heads, that’s a pretty low probability (0.39%). But on the tenth toss, the odds for that toss are still 50% heads and 50% tails. The fates are not working to “even out the odds”. There’s no metaphysical push to undo unlikely events that have already happened and “balance things out”.
The problem is that people think “well the odds of the tossing 10 heads in a row are even lower (0.2%)”….which is true. But the unlikely series of events (the 9 coin tosses in a row coming up heads at 0.39% probability) has already happened. From that point forward, the odds of that tenth head is just 50%. But the odds of the ten heads in a row is 50% x 0.39% or 0.2%.
Latest Answers