Re: Problem with your book
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Say there are two roullette wheels. Wheel A has been spun 20 times and has come up red every time! Oddly enough, Wheel B has alternated red and black outcomes for it's 20 spins, and the 20th spin was black. Which wheel is more likely to hit black on it's 21st spin?
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Look, I'm not saying you can definitely know which wheel is going to hit which, I'm not that dense, and thats why they call it gambling. However, the wheel that hit red 20 times in a row is a little more likely to hit black than the one that has been behaving properly according to probability.
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Ok, you say probability makes it more likely for a 50/50 event that has happened 20 times in a row NOT to happen the 21st time.
How? A coin that is flipped in the air is only being acted upon by gravity, and the power and angle in which it was flipped.
A roulette wheel, and money wheel is a device in which the spin of the wheel, its construction, speed and texture determines where the ball will land. Everytime it spins, each option on the wheel is equally likely to happen.
NOW, are you saying that some mystical force known as probability can overcome the laws of physics, and somehow manage to push a ball, or a coin into a direction it should not have gone, simply because it has gone the other dirrection the last 20 times? If so, why haven't scientists discovered this force known as probability? When did it develop?
Because when the big bang happened, 4 forces were created. The Strong Force, The Weak Force, Gravity, and Electromagnetic. Which one of these does this magical probability, with the power to bend physics to obey its will?
If probability worked the way you described, where previous events had a role in outcomes of independent events, a coin could not land on the same face more than once in a row. Probability, which states each side is equally likely to come up on any given flip would make sure the opposite face fell the next flip. It wouldn't take 20 flips for probability to realize it is late to work and that it better star having heads land before the entire universe is destroyed.
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