eli5 number probability

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I have a truly burning question.
If you pick a number 1-10 100 times completely randomly and each number has a 10% chance of being picked each time (so picking a 7 once doesn’t decrease the likelihood of picking it on the next try) why won’t you end up with 10 of each number?

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because probability doesn’t predict what will happen for exactly n trials. It predicts what will happen over *many* trials, where *many* means, really, the limit as n goes to infinity. The more and more times you repeat the random trial of picking a number from 1 to 10, the closer and closer you’ll get to having 10% of the total from each number. But you only get *exactly* 10% of each in the limit, with infinitely many trials (which is of course impossible to do in real life)

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