Re: Seriously! three times...the individual vs. combined probability.
Thanks for sharing.
This is the infamous gambler's fallacy. People's predisposition to patterns can often mislead and misinform.
A classic example is precisely this. "If there was 2 greens in a row, then there is no chance that the third one is green!" or "if it's been high for the last 15 rolls, surely the 16th will be low!" are things that I hear so often in gambling communities. Of course, none of these are backed by logic and will break down the more rolls you do.
This is the infamous gambler's fallacy. People's predisposition to patterns can often mislead and misinform.
A classic example is precisely this. "If there was 2 greens in a row, then there is no chance that the third one is green!" or "if it's been high for the last 15 rolls, surely the 16th will be low!" are things that I hear so often in gambling communities. Of course, none of these are backed by logic and will break down the more rolls you do.
It depends if you look at it from a conditional probability perspective. The problem is the ROI and the double the bet size strategy. The probability for green coming 16 times in a row is extremely low, namely (roughly) 0.5 to the power of 16. Now the thing is that by the sixteenth round you have already doubled your bet size 15 times, making the ROI so small that there is no justifiable relation between the expected ROI and your then chance to win.
Apart from that, it is right that there is no reason to believe that green shows up again even after showing up 15 times in a row. It is funny to see in casinos how players cross off numbers on their paper when they play roulette because when the 30 showed up last round, it can't show up again, right?
