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<blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 7539036">Really?&nbsp; You don't think you're being snarky and dismissive with &quot;Oh, I guess I have to go into this after all.&quot; (I can practically hear the sighing.) Or the little dig in the last sentence?&nbsp; It comes across as not much different than Saelorn's, &quot;Oh, well if you don't want to roleplay...&quot;I guess probability isn't the only thing that humans are bad at seeing.&nbsp; (Zing!)Anyway, if you (or somebody else) is still reading, your example about the coin flips illustrates that humans are bad at understanding what concepts like &quot;random&quot; and &quot;probability&quot; mean, but that's very different from intuiting probability from data is in the first place.&nbsp; A person might very well believe that 10 heads in a row increases the probability of getting a tails, but that same person over 10,000 flips, without counting heads and tails, might notice a bias in their coin.And, yeah, humans are also subject to superstition.&nbsp; They might see a pattern and mis-ascribe the causes for it.&nbsp; &quot;It's because I was wearing my lucky shorts!&nbsp; So I kept wearing my lucky shorts and my team kept winning!&nbsp; Amazing!&quot;&nbsp; (c.f. David Mermin's explanations of quantum physics from the point of view of baseball fandom.)&nbsp; But that doesn't mean they're bad at seeing the patterns in the first place.I wish I had a link handy (I can research it if you really don't believe me) but there was a bunch of research done about these child bookies in Rio de Janeiro who would recompute complex odds in their heads while taking bets.&nbsp; And yet I bet those same kids would demonstrate the phenomena you cite, such as the coin flipping one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Guest 6801328, post: 7539036"] Really? You don't think you're being snarky and dismissive with "Oh, I guess I have to go into this after all." (I can practically hear the sighing.) Or the little dig in the last sentence? It comes across as not much different than Saelorn's, "Oh, well if you don't want to roleplay..." I guess probability isn't the only thing that humans are bad at seeing. (Zing!) Anyway, if you (or somebody else) is still reading, your example about the coin flips illustrates that humans are bad at understanding what concepts like "random" and "probability" [I]mean[/I], but that's very different from intuiting probability from data is in the first place. A person might very well believe that 10 heads in a row increases the probability of getting a tails, but that same person over 10,000 flips, without counting heads and tails, might notice a bias in their coin. And, yeah, humans are also subject to superstition. They might see a pattern and mis-ascribe the causes for it. "It's because I was wearing my lucky shorts! So I kept wearing my lucky shorts [I]and my team kept winning[/I]! Amazing!" (c.f. David Mermin's explanations of quantum physics from the point of view of baseball fandom.) But that doesn't mean they're bad at seeing the patterns in the first place. I wish I had a link handy (I can research it if you really don't believe me) but there was a bunch of research done about these child bookies in Rio de Janeiro who would recompute complex odds in their heads while taking bets. And yet I bet those same kids would demonstrate the phenomena you cite, such as the coin flipping one. [/QUOTE]

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