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> as we all know you can't flip a coin many times without tails showing up. We don't all know that. There's an ever-decreasing but nonzero probability that you
by bitshiftfaced 3y ago
> as we all know you can't flip a coin many times without tails showing up.
We don't all know that. There's an ever-decreasing but nonzero probability that you will keep getting heads.
- Kon-Peki 3y agoThe probability that the next N flips will all be heads is small and gets smaller the larger N is. But the probability that the next flip is heads is .5 no matter how many of the previous flips were heads :)
- JohnFen 3y ago> There's an ever-decreasing but nonzero probability that you will keep getting heads. But with enough flips, the odds getting heads on all of them comes close enough to zero that they are effectively zero.
- nwallin 3y ago"Effectively zero" times infinity is infinity. Infinity is like... really big.
- JohnFen 3y agoOh, I wish I could find it, but there's an excellent video by a mathematician explaining why an infinity doesn't work in your favor here. IIRC, it's because as the number of throws approach infinity, the odds also approach being infinitesimal, and you'll still lose.
- traek 3y agoThis paradox is famously a case where the expected value of the game is infinite.