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I like these divisions! To boil down the 50/50 one: Imagine your torn between those 2 houses, and your realtor—who also does magic as a hobby—offers you a coin

I like these divisions! To boil down the 50/50 one: Imagine your torn between those 2 houses, and your realtor—who also does magic as a hobby—offers you a coin to flip. You ask, "wait, is this a trick coin?" "Yup!" he replies, "Always lands one way." "How is that going to help me then!?" "I got no idea if this is an always-heads coin or an always-tails coin. You see, when they're being minted, each coin randomly plops onto the conveyor before it enters the CBU—" "—The 'CBU'? What's that?" "—oh, the Coin Biasing Unit. It's the machine that takes a normal coin and does the proprietary thing that biases it. The coin's orientation as it enters the CBU is the way it'll be biased from then on. As I was saying, the coins enter the CBU randomly, and I've never used this particular one before, so I don't know if it's a Heads coin or a Tails coin." "... Ok then! Heads I offer on 284 Bayes St, Tails I go with 938 Bernoulli Blvd."

wolverine876 5y ago
That's great! Come to think of it, drinking games can be 'uncontrolled': 'Watch this CNBC show - every time they use a word starting with 'crypto', we drink!'
irrational 5y ago
Of course, the realtor wants you to buy the house that gives them the higher commission, so, as a hobby magician, your realtor has two coins and flips the one that they know will result in their desired outcome. That whole story about not knowing is just standard misdirection.
- smallnamespace 5y ago
  Ask the realtor to flip the coins until either HT or TH shows up. Those have equal probabilities, regardless of initial bias.
  - exmadscientist 5y ago
    Not if you do it "streaming", just flipping until you get either pattern. (Suppose T is very rare. Then you'll always start with HHH..., so you'll always get HT.) You have to "chunk" them, considering exactly two flips at a time and using each flip exactly once, to get biases to cancel out.
    - function_seven 5y ago
      I've heard people talk about a tough housing market, but this is enough to make me buy an RV instead, and hop from park to park.

wolverine876 5y ago

That's great! Come to think of it, drinking games can be 'uncontrolled': 'Watch this CNBC show - every time they use a word starting with 'crypto', we drink!'

irrational 5y ago

Of course, the realtor wants you to buy the house that gives them the higher commission, so, as a hobby magician, your realtor has two coins and flips the one that they know will result in their desired outcome. That whole story about not knowing is just standard misdirection.

smallnamespace 5y ago
Ask the realtor to flip the coins until either HT or TH shows up. Those have equal probabilities, regardless of initial bias.
- exmadscientist 5y ago
  Not if you do it "streaming", just flipping until you get either pattern. (Suppose T is very rare. Then you'll always start with HHH..., so you'll always get HT.) You have to "chunk" them, considering exactly two flips at a time and using each flip exactly once, to get biases to cancel out.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    I've heard people talk about a tough housing market, but this is enough to make me buy an RV instead, and hop from park to park.