Even when you know the odds
As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.
understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.
Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.
A couple of years ago I decided to introduce my 8 year old son to probability theory (he loves maths), and sat down with a coin and pencil and paper. I explained that if we made 10 guesses for the toss of the coin, that about 5 of those guesses would be correct – whatever he chose. To prove the point, I chose HHHHHHHHHH, and he carefully guessed 10 well mixed sequences of H and T. We then tossed the coin 10 times, I scored 6 matches, he scored 4. Nice result.
He was intrigued, so we played again. On this second run, to my astonishment, his prediction of the sequence of 10 was spot on.
Ok, so there is a well-defined probability of 1 in 1024 for either of us to guess all 10 correctly, and we did play twice (approx 1 in 256). However, what coincidence that this happened so quickly, and whilst I was trying demonstrate how unlikely it was. Even mathematicians and their physic sons find such events worthy of note.
Date submitted:Mon, 08 Jun 2015 09:51:04 +0000Coincidence ID:8120
