4 ms·
> A pretty small number of failures and you're looking at a trillion years to make it happen. This depends on the bias of the original coin. P(H) can be arbitr
by dataflow 1y ago
> A pretty small number of failures and you're looking at a trillion years to make it happen.
This depends on the bias of the original coin. P(H) can be arbitrarily large, making P(HH) the likeliest possibility even for a trillion years. "This wouldn't happen in the real world" would be a sorry excuse for the deliberate refusal to clearly state the problem assumptions upfront.
IMO, if you really want to pleasantly surprise people, you need to be forthcoming and honest with them at the beginning about all your assumptions. There's really no good excuse to obfuscate the question and then move the goalposts when they (very predictably) fall into your trap.
- Dylan16807 1y ago> This depends on the bias of the original coin. P(H) can be arbitrarily large > There's really no good excuse to obfuscate the question and then move the goalposts when they (very predictably) fall into your trap. Interesting. Because I see the guy pulling out the one-in-a-million coin and expecting it to run at a similar speed to be doing a gotcha on purpose, not falling into a trap and having the goalposts moved. And I think "well if it's a million times less likely to give me a heads, then it takes a million times as many flips, but it's just as reliable" is an answer that preserves the impressiveness and the goalposts. It's fast relative to the bias. Which seems like plenty to me when the original claim never even said it was fast. (And if the coin never gives you a heads then I'd say it no longer qualifies as randomly flipping a coin.)