I don’t know how many people I’ve met who hold beliefs like “in three card stud a four is more likely to come up after an eight than a six.” What the fuck? Is the concept of random that hard to grasp?
It’s pretty depressing. Not too long ago, someone I know expressed the belief that red is more likely to come up on a roulette table if the last five spins landed on black. He holds a graduate degree in computer science.
If all I knew was that the last five spins landed on black, if I had to bet red or black, I’d bet black. There could be a bias in the wheel, although roulette wheels in today’s casinos are pretty much free from biases. (I’d still prefer not to bet on roulette at all, though, at least not given the standard casino payouts.)
Poker is actually an interesting social experiment of how badly a game can twist people’s minds about randomness. Even the most rational players have hard time maintaining sanity when their brains are pattern-matching from data that does not have patterns (ie. deal of cards).
-- Alphadominance
It’s pretty depressing. Not too long ago, someone I know expressed the belief that red is more likely to come up on a roulette table if the last five spins landed on black. He holds a graduate degree in computer science.
If all I knew was that the last five spins landed on black, if I had to bet red or black, I’d bet black. There could be a bias in the wheel, although roulette wheels in today’s casinos are pretty much free from biases. (I’d still prefer not to bet on roulette at all, though, at least not given the standard casino payouts.)
Representativeness heuristic. It’s what humans have as a hardwired probability estimator, unless they learn counter-intuitive maths.
I don’t blame him, it’s a fairly common mistake if you don’t actively think it through.
ow ow ow ow ow.
Poker is actually an interesting social experiment of how badly a game can twist people’s minds about randomness. Even the most rational players have hard time maintaining sanity when their brains are pattern-matching from data that does not have patterns (ie. deal of cards).