fallacy ( gamblers )

[bluewater198]

What is "gamblers" Fallacy?

[WaldoMcFroog]

An example would be if you were tossing a coin - we assume it is a 'fair' coin - one that is not weighted and has an equal chance of landing either heads or tails.

If it landed on heads ten times in a row. A gambler might assume tails was due to come up, so bets on tails. His fallacy is in believing that the side the coin lands on is in anyway dependant on what has gone before. For each toss of the coin, there is a 50% chance it will land on a given side.

[Hermia]

There is a page about it on the excellent Skeptic's Dictionary site.

http://skepdic.com/gamblers.html

[El D]

I believe the example is the 'gamblers ruin', whereby the graph of statistical odds oscillates to an increasing frequency - ergo unless the gambler has infinite funds, he will always lose, because the 'losing streak' will always outweigh his ability to play.

[Loosehead]

Related to EI D 's point is the ill fated doubling scheme. You'll be amazed at the number of people who still think this can work, it works like this, I'll use roulette but I've heard it apllied to favourites, coin tossing etc. I bet a pound on black if I lose I bet �2 on black and then 4 then 8 etc until I eventually win, trouble is the wheel has no memory and the hapless punter will either run out of money or run out of limit very quickly. eg

1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 - 64 - 128 - 256 - 512 - 1024 so by spin 11 the punter has gambled 2047 to win 2048 and what if that comes up red!? Doh. If he hasn't run out of money he's probably reached the table limit. Casinos just love the doublers!

I have once seen black come up 13 times in a row and I'm sure that's not the most.