So not a fair test then?

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  • 27/09/2024

    So not a fair test then?

    John Lanchester · For Every Winner a Loser: What is finance for?

    Digression: a highly satisfying, bizarre and under-reported finding published on arxiv.org last year showed that this is exactly the same probability you get from tossing a coin. You may have been brought up to think that the probability of a coin landing heads or tails is exactly equal with every toss. That, amazingly, turns out not to be true. A coin flipped energetically and caught in mid-air is 2 per cent more likely to land on the side that was facing upwards the last time. The principles at work appear to be aerodynamic: airflow around the tossed coin makes it by a fine margin more likely to repeat the previous toss than to contradict it. By their own admission some of the richest people on the planet earned their fortunes on the basis of the same odds you get by tossing a coin.

    The rest of article is brilliant, too. Worth the annual subscription to the LRB.