Australians are the biggest (or worst) gamblers in the world per capita…………………………………………………..
(West Sydney University News, 24 April 2025)
(Henry Belot, The Guardian, 5 Mar, 2025).
Do the maths.
Why?
Do you believe in luck? Gamblers do. They believe in lucky numbers, lucky breaks, lucky colours and even a lucky rabbit’s foot (It wasn’t so lucky for the rabbit.) But more than anything else gamblers believe in patterns.
The Coin Flip
If we flip a coin an infinite number of times Heads:Tails ratio will be 50:50. But if you think of infinity as a long, long ribbon with a HTTHTHHTTT pattern then random flips means any pattern is possible. 10 H in a row is possible… or 20 H. It’s just that we suddenly see meaning in this pattern. This is the Gambler’s Fallacy. We see 10 H in a row and we say ‘Aha! The next flip has to be Tails.’ But it doesn’t have to be Tails. The next flip – as with all flips – has an equal 50:50 chance of being Heads or Tails. That’s all. But we are surprised when we see an extended streak of, say, Heads. What has happened in the past does not effect THE NEXT FLIP!!!!!
The Rouette Wheel
Roulette Wheel has 36 numbers and an equal number of Red and Black slots. ‘The most famous example of such a phenomenon occurred in a Monte Carlo Casino in the summer of 1913 when a roulette wheel landed on black 26 times in a row.’ The Decisive Moment How the Brain Makes Up Its own Mind Jonah Lehrer (Text Publishing 2009)
What do you think the gamblers did that night???
After a few Blacks in a row they started to think it was Reds turn and kept backing Red.
The Casino kept raking in the francs. It was a very good night for the house.
Mathspig Blog 