A technical correction of commonplace misinformation:

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 03:22:24 AM

Quote from: cAPSLOCK on June 29, 2022, 01:53:20 PM

And Bitcoin does not care.

Oh look! Block 742858 is going to show up any second! Or should I say, any 10 minute?

Hahahaha

I like that. It's a great reminder.

tick tock next block, and when will that next bitcoin block be coming in?
in about 10 minutes

the last block was 2 minutes ago? When do you expect the next block?
in 10 minutes

But the last block was 9.5 minutes ago? When do you expect the next block?
in about 10 minutes, give or take.

But the last block was 35 minutes ago? When do you expect the next block?
in about 10 minutes, I presume.

But, but but but.. the last block was more than 2 hours ago? When do you expect the next block?
more or less in 10 minutes.

hahahaha

10 minutes is always the correct answer.. or some variation of 10 minutes.. like 600 seconds or somewhere between 500 and 700 seconds - give or take

No. That is entirely wrong. It is widely believed even by longtime Bitcoiners—probably because “each block takes about ten minutes” just keeps being repeated as a meme, without the intervention of correct information. It also goes to show how much people’s perceptions let them fool themselves about reality; how often do you see a block arrival time of “about 10 minutes”? Only about 12% of blocks even have an arrival time between 500 and 700 seconds—a supermajority of blocks do not! Moreover, the system is “memoryless”. The expected arrival time does not start at the last block, or at any other particular point in time.

I will quote myself from the technical forum (where, incidentally, I rack up merit much faster than in WO, where I am widely disliked and ignore-listed):

Quote from: death_wish on June 20, 2022, 08:40:39 AM

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on June 20, 2022, 07:55:18 AM

Quote from: death_wish on June 19, 2022, 11:53:54 PM

IMO, it means much more to everyday usage that half of blocks are much faster than 10 minutes (but the average is dragged up to 10 minutes by the long exponential tail).

To be pedantic: 63.2% of blocks are faster than 10 minutes.

Pedantry is good. I spoke imprecisely. I was thinking of the median. Statistically, exactly 50% of blocks arrive within about 6:56 m:s or less; that is >= 30.7% faster than 10 minutes, “much faster” in my book.

Although this is tangential to the context in which it was raised, I miss no opportunity to help address a common error. Most Bitcoiners get this wrong—even most regulars in Development & Technology. Most blocks take nowhere near 10 minutes to arrive; the average of the exponential distribution is almost meaningless to everyday-life usage questions of “how long will this take?”, and the exponential distribution generally defies human intuition.

People also tend not to understand that in a memoryless system, the statistically expected arrival time starts “right now”—whenever “now” is. Without checking when the last block occurred, I know that at the moment I make this post, the next block has a 25% chance of arriving within about 2:53 from now, a 50% chance of arriving within 6:56 from now, a 75% chance of arriving within 13:52 from now, and a 25% chance of arriving >= 13:52 from now. The arrival time of the last block is irrelevant.

I otherwise mostly agreed with cAPSLOCK’s post. I had intended to address the foregoing as part of a longer reply to him. Perhaps I may complete the rest later.