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Old 12-10-2004, 03:47 PM
The Goober The Goober is offline
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Default Re: variance of a coin flip

[ QUOTE ]
each coin flip is a bernoulli trial with p=0.5, assuming a fair coin. repeated bernoulli trials are modeled with the binomial distribution. the variance of the binomial distribution over n trials is np(1-p). in this case, your variance is 100 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 25 bets per hour.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm a little confused now. Using your formula, it looks like if I was to play twice as many flips per hour, then my variance would be 200 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 50 bets per hour. Shouldn't increasing the number of flips actually lower my variance? If I flipped the coin a billion times an hour, shouldn't my actual result be very, very close to the expected result and my variance be really low?
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