Re: Can someone answer me this?
- From: Barry Schwarz <schwarzb@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 11:16:50 -0700
On 27 Apr 2005 10:13:08 -0700, bugaboo171@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I've been looking at the probability of even chance patterns repeating,
>in games such as roulette. Yes, I know you can't beat the house edge,
>but I've been messing about for fun on a roulette random number
>generator. Anyway, I was looking at the chances of a 4 spin colour
>pattern repeating i.e RRBR. There are 16 possible combinations of that
>pattern, therefore the chance of a single pattern occurring is 1 in 16.
> For a pattern to occur then repeat consecutively I thought the odds
>would be 1/16 * 1/16 = 1/256. I know all the spins are independent, so
>previous spins have no bearing on future spins. But if an event has a
>1 in 16 chance of occurring, then the odds of that event repeating
>straight away should be 1/16 * 1/16, shouldn't they? From observed
>results and a couple thousand spins the repeating pattern occurs much
>more frequently than this. Can anyone answer why?
In order for an event to repeat, it must occur the first time. This
is a marginal probability. (Or maybe the term is conditional
probability; college math was a long time ago.) What is the
probability of the event occurring twice given that it has already
occurred once.
The probability you are calculating is the probability of an
independent event occurring twice in succession which is much
different.
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