The Gambler's Fallacy: 26 Blacks in a Row at Monte Carlo in 1913

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

On August 18, 1913, a roulette wheel at the Monte Carlo Casino landed on black 26 consecutive times, odds of roughly one in 68.4 million. The crowd that gathered was sure red was due and pushed millions of francs onto it as the streak ran on. They lost fortunes to a belief that random events keep a ledger. This episode takes that night as the entry point to the gambler's fallacy, using a simple coin toss to show the error: five heads in a row is a 1 in 32 shot before you start, but after four heads the fifth flip is still 50-50, because the coin has no memory.

The instinct is old. In 1796 Pierre-Simon Laplace described expectant fathers who feared that a run of boys born nearby had used up the supply. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman traced it to a belief in the law of small numbers, and brain imaging shows what happens after a loss. The episode then follows the bias into asylum courts, ballparks, banks, lotteries, and video games, and asks whether it can be unlearned.

U.S. asylum judges were 5.5 percent less likely to approve a request after granting the previous two, and loan officers were 8 percent less likely to approve after a prior approval.
Major League Baseball umpires were 1.3 percent less likely to call a strike when the previous two pitches had been called strikes.
When the number 244 won a lottery in April 1988, 41 players had picked it. Three days later only 24 did, and it took two months for bets to recover.
A 1967 experiment found that people explicitly taught about the fallacy performed identically to those who were not.
The fix that worked was reframing: when participants treated a toss as the first of a new block instead of the last of an old one, the fallacy disappeared.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(16184)

The Art of Adult Friendship: Why Quality Matters More Than Quantity

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore how our understanding of friendship changes as we grow old...

9 Marras 18min

Summer Explained: The Science, History, and Traditions of the Warmest Season

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore summer, the season most closely associated with sunshine, ...

7 Marras 18min

Sir Patrick Stewart: From Shakespeare to Star Trek, the Life and Legacy of a Legend

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the extraordinary life of Sir Patrick Stewart, the acclaim...

7 Marras 49min

Larry David: The Genius of Social Awkwardness, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life and career of Larry David, the comedian, writer, ...

6 Marras 38min

Why Australian Shepherds Aren't From Australia

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the history of the Australian Shepherd, an intelligent, en...

5 Marras 45min

Labrador Retriever: From Newfoundland Fishing Dogs to Modern-Day Heroes

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the remarkable history of the Labrador Retriever, one of t...

4 Marras 53min

Discovering Ireland: A Journey Through History, Culture, and the Wild Atlantic Way

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore Ireland through the philosophy of slow travel: go slower, ...

3 Marras 48min

Willie Hutch: An Overnight I'll Be There Lyric and The Mack's Soundtrack

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!William McKinley Hutchins was born in Los Angeles in December 1944 and raised in Dallas, where h...

2 Marras 21min