Frank wrote,
"To say for sure that changing machines influenced your results, one would need to be able to go back in time, not change machines and see if anything altered. And if this was possible, we'd find out that in some cases changing machines did improve results, and in other trials staying put would actually have been better. It's the nature of randomness."
I've done that, and it is interesting to see the results.
Ha! But I have thought about that and that's the whole thing: we never can know what the other road would bring if we had chosen it. You are completely right. And since it really is random I grant that basically and realistically you are also right. There's no guarantee and mechanically the machines are identical.
In regard as to whether streaks exist - as the below quote states: Chance is lumpy....
1
Judgment of randomness
Overview
? Which of the strings THTHTTHHTH, and HTTTTHHTHH looks
more like it happened due to chance?
- People tend to think that random strings of events must be
'locally' random
. - Evidence: The presence of streaks alters judgments of
randomness (Olivola & Oppenheimer, 2008)
. When judging randomness of remembered string, when
streak was near beginning or end it was judged less
random than if streak was in middle.
Examples of the streakiness of chance
? Streaks of wins playing card games, gambling, answer "b" on
an exam, coincidental meetings of someone (fate?), others?
? Must recognize that..
- Chance is lumpy
Valerie
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