Coin Tossing Championship
Picture a fare coin flipping world championship with 1024 Competitors. To win they must flip heads to move to the next round. The sample space of possible random results for every competitor / round is Heads or Tails, with a probability of P(x) = 0.5 for both.
In about 9 -10 rounds they come down to the final throw and a single champion emerges. His track record was flawless. Ironically his chance of success on each throw never exceeds 50-50. The law of overall averages says someone had to win. There was no skill, and no could truly know the results of each throw (let alone the entire competition), regardless of past performance.
Knowing the Future.
You might use statistics to predict the outcome of a random variable but no one can really “know” that value. By default a random variable is a potential range of values. A random variable once observed (even with a crystal ball) becomes an observation and ceases to be a random. …show more content…
As a child I was fascinated by the odds of coin flipping, and the concept of regression to the mean. Eventually through training I found you could improve coordination and timing and change the odds from 50:50 to about 70:30. Although amusing, I thought it was a rather useless skill until I taught it to my sons, who now regularly use coin tosses to resolve disputes with their
Picture a fare coin flipping world championship with 1024 Competitors. To win they must flip heads to move to the next round. The sample space of possible random results for every competitor / round is Heads or Tails, with a probability of P(x) = 0.5 for both.
In about 9 -10 rounds they come down to the final throw and a single champion emerges. His track record was flawless. Ironically his chance of success on each throw never exceeds 50-50. The law of overall averages says someone had to win. There was no skill, and no could truly know the results of each throw (let alone the entire competition), regardless of past performance.
Knowing the Future.
You might use statistics to predict the outcome of a random variable but no one can really “know” that value. By default a random variable is a potential range of values. A random variable once observed (even with a crystal ball) becomes an observation and ceases to be a random. …show more content…
As a child I was fascinated by the odds of coin flipping, and the concept of regression to the mean. Eventually through training I found you could improve coordination and timing and change the odds from 50:50 to about 70:30. Although amusing, I thought it was a rather useless skill until I taught it to my sons, who now regularly use coin tosses to resolve disputes with their