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Originally Posted by Erasmus00 I think the question is about an imaginary, perfect roulette wheel. Obviously, in practice, any single roulette wheel will have a bias. Alternatively, we could rotate through a new roulette wheel every spin, to try and average out any bias effects. Or, given a real situation, we could try to calculate where the ball will land, given some initial conditions of the throw, which is, I believe, what the stanford guys did.
-Will |
My point exactly...or close enough. In my view, using the roulette wheel as an example is in the least disengenuous and in the most an outright deception. If the point of the original post is just to go through some series of probability calculations of an idealised state, then all that ought to be given is the numbers and no connection made to any reality. Otherwise there is an implication that the calculation results actually represent reality regardless of how many times one lists caveats to the contrary.
All of probability - no matter how simple or complex - rests on a single assumption and all reality - no matter how simple or complex - denies that assumption; that is, all things being equal. Nothing ever was, is, or will be all equal. The devil is in the details, so I sometimes play his advocate.
