Ask Experts Questions for FREE Help !
Ask
    Nazan's Avatar
    Nazan Posts: 1, Reputation: 1
    New Member
     
    #1

    Jan 27, 2010, 08:08 PM
    Does randomness exist?
    If you flip a coin it will randomly be heads or tails. But, if you flip the coin 1000 times you can predict that about 500 will be heads and 500 will be tails which is no longer random. So, does randomness exist? Or does it only exist with a small sample size?
    ebaines's Avatar
    ebaines Posts: 12,131, Reputation: 1307
    Expert
     
    #2

    Jan 29, 2010, 07:17 AM

    As long as the coin is truly "fair," then indeed this is a random process. It doesn't matter what happens on the first N tosses, you have no way of knowing whether the N+1st toss will be heads or tails - so it's random. The number of possible sequences in 1000 coin flips is 2^1000, which is a truly stupefying number of possibilities (much much larger than a googol), and each one of those squences is equally likely to occur. The fact that getting 500 heads and 500 tails is much more likely than all heads is because there are more sequences that have 500 heads and 500 tails in them (about 10^29 such sequences) than there are sequences with 100 heads and 0 tails (there's just one of those).

    All this assumes that the coin is truly "fair." You can get into a long discussion about whether there are actually any physical processes in nature that are truly random, but that's another topic.

Not your question? Ask your question View similar questions

 

Question Tools Search this Question
Search this Question:

Advanced Search

Add your answer here.


Check out some similar questions!

Might dragons exist? [ 33 Answers ]

Does anyone believe they might of existed? Its strange because there are legends of them everywhere, including places that never came into contact. And as fanciful as it sounds don't you think that it might be possible? Although, there is the wizard's first rule: People will believe anything...

Does it exist ? [ 4 Answers ]

Darkness?

Pure Randomness. My mind in the morning. [ 347 Answers ]

9/30 I really dislike feminist. Even though I am a women. President Bush sucks poop threw a straw. Freedom of speech isn't really much freedom. What makes a curse word a curse word? Why is Poop so much better then Sh*t? Who was the guy who invented the middle finger? it's the same as...

The one may truly not exist. [ 5 Answers ]

Hey my friend told me this riddle before he went away. It's been weeks and sadly I still can't figure it out. Can anyone help solve it? Have you ever fell so far into someone.. that the only thing you could do was hold on to the breathe of there presence... Because comes a day when you wake...


View more questions Search