Noam Chomsky Flips Heads 100x in a Row

[Kellon]

I hope you won't consider this too out of place, but I'm trying to recall a book my son had a few years ago by Noam Chomsky, in which he (Chomsky) laid out a "proof" for flipping a heads 100 times in a row. I may be totally mis-recalling the whole thing. It seems like it was in a lengthy footnote or something. I asked my son, but he couldn't remember the title, since it was one of those "for class" things that get forgotten as soon as the assignment is completed. There was something about it that bugged me then and still bugs me every once in a while now. I must have looked at a couple hundred web pages over the past month trying to find a hint of it, to no avail.

Any of you probability experts read Chomsky?

[gaming_mouse]

Kellon,

I've read some Chomsky, but I don't recall reading this.

What do you mean by a "proof" of flipping a coin 100 times in row? I can't even imagine what that could mean. The odds of that happening, of course, are (.5)^100, and astronomically small number.

gm

[rybones]

I actually learned this trick because of reading something about this when I was in school and it always stuck with me. Anyway I do not know if what I read was Chomsky or not, but what I read had to do with analyzing true randomness. The deal is that you can learn to flip a coin so that it lands on whichever side you wish it to land. The principal is the same a juggling bowling pins. You need to toss them in the air with precission so that you always catch the narrow end. Alas, this stuck with me I decided to play with it in my college days. Since then, if I flip a quarter in the air and let it land in my hand I can make it land heads up 80 out of 100 times or so. It is a pretty cool bar trick and has won me more than a fair amount of money.

I don't know if this is what you meant or not, but I hope it was intersting.

Ryan

[gaming_mouse]

Ryan,

This is a cool trick. Hard to believe, actually. I mean, how many rotations does you quarter do. I know that when I flip a coin it's spinning so fast that there is just no way anyone could count the number of flips or anything and control how it landed. Do you flip it more slowly? Even so, still cool.

gm

[Kellon]

"Proof" was a really poor choice of words, which is why I put it in quotes. A better word wasn't occurring to me when I wrote the question.

What little I recall was something about having 50 pairs of people (might even have been more) each flip a coin and the person (or persons?) who flipped heads then were repaired and flipped again, etc. At the end, according to the discussion, you would end up with a person who flipped a heads 100x in a row. One of the things that bothered me then and now was that it didn't seem to allow for nobody in the pairs flipping heads.

Chomsky apparently is also a mathemetician at some level, I believe, for whatever that's worth.

I could be pretty far off in my recollection, but I do think I've got the jist of it. I hate to say more or ask questions about it without having it in front of me, which is why I'm trying to find it.

[rybones]

I have never been able to count as you are right it flips too fast. However take a quarter out -- or better still for learning I big ol silver dollar -- and start by trying to just flip it twice. It is actually really hard for the first 2 or 3 days/6 gazillion times. I found beer really helpful in the beginning (ah college). Soon you will find that you just have a feel for the coin and you will be flipping more revolutions than you can count. However, you will also have this sense of: "ok too fast that time, slow it a bit."

Good luck,

Ryan

[quix0tic]

I read chomsky's politics and hugely respect him. The example you allude to may be from some of his linguistic work with which I am less familiar. I do remember some example where he suggested taking a stadium full of people and letting them each stand and flip coins, sitting down when they got tails. At the end of even 11 or 12 flips, you will still have people standing up (2^12= about one person in 4k). Point seemed to be that events which can be seen as highly improbable individually are in fact very likely. Don't know if that is what you were looking for but just throwing it out there.

[ZeeBee]

Trying to get a coin to land on the right side repetitively is very, very difficult.

But doing it by the usual coin-flip method of catching it and slapping it onto the back of your hand is actually fairly easy.

With a little practice you can learn to tell one side of most coins from the other by rubbing your thumb over it as you turn you hand to slap it on the back of your other hand. All you have to do then is get the coin to turn over as you slap it down if it's facing the wrong way - pretty easy too.

A few minutes practice and you should have it.

ZB

[MortalWombatDotCom]

[ QUOTE ]
I read chomsky's politics and hugely respect him. The example you allude to may be from some of his linguistic work with which I am less familiar. I do remember some example where he suggested taking a stadium full of people and letting them each stand and flip coins, sitting down when they got tails. At the end of even 11 or 12 flips, you will still have people standing up (2^12= about one person in 4k). Point seemed to be that events which can be seen as highly improbable individually are in fact very likely. Don't know if that is what you were looking for but just throwing it out there.

[/ QUOTE ]

i've heard about similar "experiments" where, for example, you fill a dump truck with dimes, dump it out, pick up every dime that comes up heads, put those back in the truck, and repeat. eventually you wind up with a dime that has come up heads a disturbing number of times in sequence. also a scheme with stock picks, where you send an emails to each of a thousand people, recommending to half of them to buy a particular stock issue, and to the other half, to short sell. you repeat 9 more times, changing around your recommendations so that you don't send the same set of recommendations to any two recipients. after 10 letters, one person thinks you can predict with 100% accuracy the short term behavior of certain stocks, and another 10 people think you have a track record of 9 and 1. offer those 11 people a subscription to your stock recommendation service, or shares in your mutual fund, or whatever.

neither of these things has anything to do with chomsky, but i like the sound of my own keyboard clicks.

[Kellon]

You could be on the right track. Next time I see my son I'm going to have to lean on him to think harder about what the book was about, if not the title.

Thanks for your help, everyone. And -- good luck with learning to control your coin flips. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]