Friday, August 20, 2010

A gamblers Fallacy

The Gambler’s fallacy is the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality, they are not. Certain probabilities, such as getting a heads when you flip a (fair) coin, are always the same. The probability of getting a heads is 50%, it does not matter if you’ve gotten tails the last 10 flips. Thinking that the probabilities have changed is a common bias, especially when gambling. For example, I am playing roulette. The last four spins have landed on black, it has to be red this time right? Wrong! The probability of landing on red is still 47.37% (18 red spots divided by 38 total spots). This may sound obvious, but this bias has caused many a gambler to lose money thinking the probabilities have changed. betting fallacies will never go away. its human nature

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