Critical Thinking Part 5: The Gambler's Fallacy

Part 5 of the TechNyou critical thinking resource.

The resource covers basic logic and faulty arguments, developing student's critical thinking skills.

Suitable for year 8-10, focused on science issues, the module can be adapted to suit classroom plans.

The resource is found here:

Transcript can be found here:

There are also two new downloadable Critical Thinking guides:
and


Continued in Part 6:
Critical Thinking Part 6: A precautionary tale

Animated and directed by James Hutson, Bridge8.
Written by Mike Mcrae and James Hutson

[kji]

"So while our brains see patterns, ...it takes science to prove that these patterns are real."

Awesome line. Keep them videos coming!

[samniemi]

If you flip a coin 99 times and it always comes up heads, what is the probability that it will come up heads on the next flip? The statistician will tell you 50%. At some point you have to start believing that the coin isn't perfectly balanced.

[CharlesVanNoland]

There *is* a pattern in there: ultimately, on a long enough timeline, the average number of heads/tails will be 50/50. How many times you need to flip to get within a specific approximation of 50% is where there is no pattern. Two tosses might be all you need. Maybe 10, maybe a million.

[springbokcasino]

Great video! I work in PR for an online casino, and people are always asking me if this or that "betting system" will work. Betting systems actually exploit the gambler's fallacy because they tell people to bet on the expectation that a certain outcome is 'due' in roulette, craps or slots. If only people thought a bit they'd realize that if a betting system could beat the house, casinos would go out of business in a flash!

[danielm]

Gamblers Fallacy is weird. Each individual toss is 50/50, but if you bet on frequencies (3 heads frequencies are more common then 4 heads frequencies) then it isn't 50/50 anymore (I think). It's hard to really grasp why those two situations can't be correlated in a useful way when betting.

[sengelle]

this reminds me of the monty hall problem.
why it gets constantly misunderstood *is* because of the gamblers fallacy, what this guy talks about here..  only now,  ive been able to put it into words.

[GioGziro]

I generally consider myself as a rational thinker, but this thing almost *always* goes against my intuition despite the fact that I know it's wrong.

[valerieshaw]

Incredibly useful and generous resource.

[i_am_the_old_channel]

I'm a professional translator and I'm currently working on translating the series into Russian for the people from the Zeitgeist movement. It'll be completed in a couple of days. If you wish, I can contact you when I'm done and send the text broken down into same pieces as they appear in the video. I read my YT PM regularly, so you may reply there directly.

[ScbdfrgStratten]

i found Vsouce Veritasium and this channel this night... my brain is about to explode!!!

[rogermwilcox]

1:12 Woot! I haven't heard the "Pac Man dying" sound in over a decade. Nice to hear it again!

[kpicott]

There's a premise flaw in the argument over what coin toss result to expect next. Seeing 7 out of 9 "tails" results brings one to suspect that the coin is not fair after all and that the odds are greatly in favour of another tails. Pattern recognition is a tool by which we can determine probabilities in real world situations, and in fact this type of inductive reasoning is the basis for a lot of science.

[TheaDragonSpirit]

Reason I say this was because I was messing around tossing a coin I chucked in the air on to my table it landed on the table, started to spin, then stopped in the up right position. It was awesome.

[techNyouvids]

Getting permission to have them redubbed is tricker, but we'll keep your request in mind and will let you know. Thanks!

[loonaticaaron]

Casino's don't make money because of the gamblers fallacy. That is quite a poor example. The gamblers fallacy would set the casino to break even after a long period of business (assuming non-skill based games). Casino's make money because the odds of the games are in their favor (and other sketchy tactics).

[trevorhensley]

This'll help me understand the Jurassic Park novels and love them even more.

[CRTVD]

This is my favorite video of the series !!!

[sudocatsdaguy]

Resently I read Dostoyevsky's "Gambler", and it was funny how well the gambler's fallacy was portrayed in it, BEing a gambler himself, Dostoyevsky probably did believe himself that only a stupid gambler bets on a zero, after making a killing on it, when a smart gambler knows the zero isn't due for a while.

However casino's make money because people believe they can outsmart the odds. Gambler's fallacy is a small part of it.

[andygray]

Good series, worth showing your kids. 

[IZEASGT]

@Neoplantski Probability doesn't work that way. With 100 perfect coin flips, the odds of it being EXACTLY a 50/50 split is about 8%, assuming my math is right. I think the formula is (n choose n/2)/(2^n), n being 100. 40 heads and 60 tails is about 1%, and the probability of it being BETWEEN 60/40 and 40/60 is about 96.5%.

The trick is that as n grows arbitrarily large, the standard deviation, as a FRACTION of n, becomes arbitrarily small.