Re: Is the expected waiting time for a block always 10 min?
For every block that takes an hour, there should be one that takes a few seconds.
True, but...
If you "suffer through" an unusually long streak (high wait time for blocks, dice rolls under 7, etc), then at some point you have to get fast blocks or high dice rolls in order for the stats to normalize. Is it accurate to say the dice have long-term memory?
If you "suffer through" an unusually long streak (high wait time for blocks, dice rolls under 7, etc), then at some point you have to get fast blocks or high dice rolls in order for the stats to normalize. Is it accurate to say the dice have long-term memory?
The average time between blocks has been about 10 minutes. There is no mechanism to guarantee that the future average time between blocks will be 10 minutes. However unlikely it might be, the average time between the 2016 blocks in a difficulty period could be 1 hour or 30 seconds. If the first 1008 blocks averaged 20 minutes each, there is nothing that will make the last 1008 blocks average 0 minutes in order to maintain the expected 10 minute average. Statistics describing the past can be extrapolated in order to predict the future, but they can't affect the future.
FYI This is related to the fallacy of the concept of "reversion to the mean".