Flipping 5 tails in a row, it’s still a 50/50 chance to get a tail in the next flip?

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Flipping a tail is a 1/2 chance, but flipping 6 tails in a row is a 1/64, so if after flipping 5 tails, why is it incorrect to say that your chance of flipping another tail is now lower, like you’re “bound” to get a head? I know this is the gambler’s fallacy, but why is it a fallacy? I get that each coin flip is independent, but it feels right (as fallacies often do) that in consecutive flips the previous events matter? Please, help me see it in a different way.

In: Mathematics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Each flip is independent. The universe does not conspire to even out results over multiple flips. Think about how would that even work? There’d have to be some memory stored of what the previous results were and some mechanism to alter physics to influence the probability of the next flip. Seems unlikely to me unless you believe there is something non-scientific outside the laws of physics happening like fate

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