In my way of thinking (admittedly perhaps not the way everyone else thinks) the goal of this exercise is to find an analogy to the discreteness of each hand of VP as opposed to true randomness. The probability of X occuring in each hand is a "pattern" that can be easily calculated. The complete and utter lack of relationship between the outcomes of Hand X and Hand Y seems to be the concept the causes the target audience of the analogy the biggest problems.
Convincing someone that the probability of a Royal occuring on the next hand is the same regardless of whether the last 5 hands were Royals or if the last 500,000 hands were not Royals is virtually impossible if that person's starting point is believing that heads is "due" after 3 consecutive tails.
I have a brother who's an engineer. He "knows" the roll of the dice are discrete events, but he doesn't "believe" it, if that makes any sense. Personally, I've given up trying to argue with folks who refuse to acknowledge it.
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
From: nightoftheiguana2000@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:16:57 +0000
Subject: [vpFREE] Re: Best Randomness Analogy Contest
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, David Silvus <djsilvus@...> wrote:
>The total of the roll of 2 dice isn't entirely random since certain totals of the 2 dice are far more probable than others.
I guess that's true if you define random as equiprobable as Frank wants to do. Personally I'm not that crazy about that definition. It leads to odd conclusions, like that the results of video poker are less random than the results of a fair coin flip, since everybody knows the results of video poker are not equiprobable.
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