The truth about Gambling

Shows the facts about odds in gambling

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Gambling
• God
• Evidence
• Atheism
• Dawkins

[RaspK]

Another way to explain this is the Law of Large Numbers, and examine die rolls.

Suppose you have a perfectly stochastic die in front of you; now, if you roll that die 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 times, how many times do you expect to win, if your only winning condition is rolling a 6?

The correct response is: on average, a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times.

Obviously, if winning was a 50-50 thing, wouldn't you expect to win, on average, 3,000,000,000,000,000,000 rolls?

[Bodhitharta]

But you agree it is true that I could roll a 6 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 time right?

In -fact I guarantee if you roll a die 12 times you will roll a 6 four times try it and get back to us but only do it once.

[sean14916]

do i piss intel computer chips?

[Bodhitharta]

That is not a gambling question

[RaspK]

You lack even the most basic understanding of statistics: while it's true that any card will or will not be the Six of Hearts, the possibility of any card being the Six of Cards is based on a formula that differs according to the data we have; in this case, it's equal to 1/52, or ~1,923%. The reason it is not 1/2 or 50% is that, while there are two conditions, it being or not being the Six of Hearts, they are not equally probable (1/52 versus 51/52).

Alea iacta est. :P

[Bodhitharta]

So without any knowledge of the cards would the person answering the question "is this the 6 of hearts or not?" what would their chances be according to them?

[RaspK]

I am a roleplayer; I have rolled more dice than you will ever lay your hands on. And there is something you obviously haven't noticed: you are being inconsistent (or, I might hypothesize, really sloppy): if your claim had any validity, then you'd roll a 6 3,000,000,000,000,000,000 times.

By the way, your guarantee is bullocks: I took a die that's quite fair and then rolled it 12 times, just so I would not be simply dismissing you.

The result: 1 out of 12 rolls; that's typical.

[sean14916]

lets say i decided to bet you ten whole british pounds that your dead wrong in your assertion. based on the number of people on the comments section who are disagreeing with you do you still think the probabilities are 50-50 that you'l win the bet?

[Lilith112358]

So deciding on an outcome in advance, regardless of how remote, instantaneously changes its odds to 50%? Interesting... can you produce any evidence to support this?

[sean14916]

this guy either is going to give me a doller or he isnt, its 50-50. this guy either is going to give me two dollers or he isnt, it's 50-50. this guy either is going to give me three dollers or he isnt, its 50-50...

so in theory even if it is only 50-50 i should have an infinte amount of money from this guy.

[sean14916]

1 in 52. because there are 52 cards.

1 of them is the card you want.

51 of them arnt the card you want.

you are 51 times more likely to be wrong than you are to be right. the sum of all the individual probabilities must be 1. you have 52 possible outcomes. therefor if you let the probability it is the 6 of hearts be a.

51a + a = 1

52a = 1

a = 1/52

[sean14916]

so. there are only two outcomes. either i piss intel computer chips and can survive after eating a live grenade or i cant. it should be 50-50 right? by the same token i have a 50% chance of walking through walls, becomind a smurf, slaying a dragon, appearing in a tv documentory about ACDC and eating my own head.

[Lilith112358]

No, but your logic could still be applied to it. Or indeed any question with a yes/no answer, regardless of how nonsensical.

[RaspK]

The probability is the number of times you may be right to the total possibilities.

Your confusion stems from the false idea that because there are two possible ways to respond to the question whether it is the card in question, that means that the two possibilities are equally likely.

However, the six of cards appears only once in any normal deck of cards; that means that, of all 52 cards, only one will be correct for the guess of 6♥. That gives exactly 1/52, because there are 52 cards.