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Douglas 73
Posts:
22
From:
Pacific northwest, USA
Registered:
1/15/11
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527 heads out of 1,000 coin flips redux...
Posted:
Jun 26, 2012 6:42 PM
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Referencing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/science/11esp.html
My apologies for taking so long to answer to this subject, but I plead to
being old, slow thinking, and generally thorough.
Lately I have succeeded in creating a number of basic standard probability
scales as usually defined: more than zero, through to, and including, 1.
When I took Stat 101, someone forgot to tell me that these are merely
midpoint interval scales for all points except for the 1.
I have always taken an answer like 527 heads resulting from 1,000 coin
tosses as an actual 0.043852515 one-tail probability occurrence in the
infinite scheme of the universe. It turns out this probability amount is
merely a midpoint scale amount. The actual comparable one-tail probability
of 527 heads occurring is 0.005874295. This is a difference of almost 7 1/2
times. May I be allowed to call this a significant difference?
Now this is mostly statistics talk so far. I think us ordinary humans would
better understand these results in the form of odds against. In this
example, the generally accepted scale amount translates to almost 22:1 odds
against being by mere chance. Since I am an ordinary human, I take that as
being pretty chancy, but maybe possible. I think I would ask for the coin
flips to be repeated to see what happens for the next 1,000.
But the actual odds are 169:1. You have little chance convincing me these
527 heads are an actual fair result.
Douglas
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