Comment by stetrain
3 hours ago
> If I toss a coin four times and it comes up heads three and tails once, it doesn’t mean that there’s a 75% chance that this coin lands heads up.
No, but it means that to ensure that I do better on my next set of coin tosses I need to beat 3 in 4, not 1 in 2.
But you doing better is independent of the risk involved. The chances of you getting 3/4 heads or better is around 31%, so theres ~69% chance you’ll do worse next time round. Doesn’t change the fact that each coin toss is still 50/50.
> Doesn’t change the fact that each coin toss is still 50/50.
That assumes a fair coin. The fact is you don't know what the odds were of getting heads or tails for that particular coin, all you know is that you got 3/4 heads. And in this analogy, a few hundred coins have every been made, in maybe a dozen styles, none of which have been fair, so you have no good reason to believe that this particular coin should have 50/50 odds of landing heads up.