No, I distinctly remember our maths teacher at school telling us that even if we'd had 200 heads in a row, it was still 50-50 for getting another one. He was, of course, trying to impress on us the memoryless property of probability. But, from a Bayesian perspective, he was dead wrong.
What was that Derren Brown thing he did where he showed himself flipping loads of heads in a row. Then at the end he showed that he'd filmed all day to get that one sequence.
Ok, well his approach was wrong, then. Maybe it would be better to start with a dice example – if you throw a die twice, for instance, would you be more likely, less likely or as likely to get a 3 then a 5 or a 6 followed by another 6? I saw a small survey on this done on the street on TV a while back, asking adults this question, and the majority of them got it wrong (thought 3 then 5 was more likely because it looks more random).
It just says that you shouldn't assume that your assumptions are right.
But five is more random - the dots are all over the place instead of being in two neat rows like six is.
With the abolition of betting tax, and more recently the advent of Betfair and in-running betting, this has really changed and it is now really possible to make money betting on sporting events. Not necessarily easy though to win after commission.
How serious about wanting backers are you? You were going to advertise in Private Eye, but didn't follow up on my expression of interest. I could have stood you the full £5K.
