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
Flipping a coin has a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails.
The sequence of ten heads in a row seems unlikely, but it’s actually just as likely as any other individual sequence, because they’re all made of the same 50/50 shot taken ten times in a row. A sequence doesn’t actually affect the next thing in the sequence because it’s all random chance.
If you watch your buddy flip a coin ten times and it’s heads every time, you would think tails for the next time. But if you DIDNT see the previous ten flips, you’d know it’s just a 50/50. Random chance never actually ‘sees’ (or cares about) the first ten flips, so it knows it’s just a 50/50.
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