[monkey_n+1]

Is this a banana which I see before me, the peel toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not and yet I smell the still. Chomp chomp, small fruit. My belly is becoming a large walking shadow, it will rumble a few more hours and then be heard no more. All with peels is not gold. Out bruised spot, out I say! One two! I'm taking this back to the supermarket. Bubble bubble boil mush mubble, sorry to squabble but these still aren't good enough for banana bread my dear courtesy clerk. Is it better to pray for them or just bury them? Day old one day sale-o indeed! Gross! Alas Chiquita, I knew her well. Yes we have no more bananas? Friends and fellow roaming monkeys, lend me some pears. Skylark, a pound of plantains please. Mellow, for they are bound to be the very next phase. Bruised ones, they are dangerous. My love is like a yellow yellow banana. Ooooogaaa Chugga oogaa chugga

[Scrooge]

Tom and company: I know you're right, mathematically, about past events not counting and the next time odds always being 50-50; but we've an intuitive sense that the real world doesn't work that way - else movie directors couldn't build so much tension into their gambling sequences. The lucky crapshooter rolls, and rolls, and rolls again. Will he quit in time and walk away with his winnings? Or will he crap out? The drum beats get more insistent; the brow begins to sweat; we know the end is near. - In the real world it does make a difference how often you've tried before. or perhaps, just that you have tried before. Maybe the problem is in the math. Maybe statistics needs its own version of chaos theory, a mathematics to describe real world events that traditional mathematics can't handle? Excuse me. I'm in way over my head.

[MtnGoat]

The mathematics of probability, when matched with empirical data anyone can gather using good method, will bear out probability theory 100%. These things *are* tested in the real world. The problem is the human mind and it's tendency to infuse situations with emotion. What something *feels* like when you're standing at a crap table has no bearing whatsoever on what the odds are each time you roll. The feeling that past rolls do matter is merely an intuitive awareness of the reality of cumulative probability, instead of single event probability, IMO.

[Tom]

It's funny you guys bring up the craps table example. Being a mathemetican and statistician, I know that each roll of the dice is independent of the last roll regardless of which dice are thrown, who is throwing them, whether they fell off the table on the previous roll, whether they hit someone's stray hand, etc. given fair dice and no foul play. I am fascinated whenever I go into a casino and watch the superstitions come alive, even in my mind. The thing about randomness, however, is that these wild "streaks" are in fact expected to occur. If they did not, things would not be random. Every possible combination must eventually play out, even "streaks" that do not look random. Flip a coin 5 times and there is actually a 6% chance you'll get a streak of 5 heads or 5 tails. When it occurs does it mean the "real world" isn't random? Nope, it's just randomness at work.

[MCaver]

I was good at math once, but I have computers to do it for me now. Logic is my cornerstone, and it seems logical to me that someone that flies often is more likely to die in a plane crash than someone who flies infrequently, due to the sheer number of flights taken, i.e. it's cumulative. Does math say that's not the case? I tried following all of the above posts, but I'm afraid I need the monkey answer as well.

[Scrooge]

[polarbear]

It has to be superstition or something. What are the chances of running into some guy on the trail wearing blue suede hiking boots? http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=573&ncid=757&e=1&u=/nm/20020815/od_nm/gamblers_dc_1

[Tom]