Sheer luck...or something else?

[mjr]

Hillary's camp wins 6 coin tosses...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ictories-were/

Luck, or something else?

Consider:

Each coin has a 1/2 probability (assuming a fair coin) of landing on whatever is called.

Six coins means that there is a 1/(2^6) chance of all six coins coming up as called.

That gives a value of 1/64, or approximately 0.0156, or 1.56% chance of that happening.

The odds are HUGELY against it.

This story paints a different picture...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswi.../#bd7266e6606a

But I'm simply asking (since I know there are a few Liberal Democrats here), was this luck, or something else?

I'm personally not likely to vote for either major party candidate in the General Election, regardless of who it is, so I'm just putting this out there. I'm not sure I could be convinced, either.

[HYHYBT]

Go back to the first link and read the update at the bottom. There were more than six tosses, so that she won six of them isn't so odd.

[mjr]

Go back to the first link and read the update at the bottom. There were more than six tosses, so that she won six of them isn't so odd.

Cool. The udpate wasn't there when I posted the original link. Thanks for the correction.

[Gravekeeper]

Soon as I heard this one I knew there would be an update/correction and knew this is going to turn into one of those undying campaign myths that'll get bandied around Facebook for the rest of the election.

I mean, there's only so many more Benghazi hearings they can call before the end of the election. They need something new -.-

Frankly, the bigger take away here is that the entire concept and process of the Iowa Caucus is idiotic and needs to be excised from the political process.

[Titi]

Hillary killed her campaign in NH due to this. p

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/us...ders.html?_r=0

Really? There is a special place in hell for women who do not support her? and then (read the article) the younger women only prefer Sanders because that is where the boys are? Do we not have brains? We didn't give Hilary the nomination at the end because of her lies. Remember she tried to say that she had to duck fire in a foreign country in her last campaign. Only to be called out by Sinbad who was on the plane with her.

[Gravekeeper]

Really? There is a special place in hell for women who do not support her? and then (read the article) the younger women only prefer Sanders because that is where the boys are? Do we not have brains?

In fairness, Hillary didn't say either of those things herself. But also in fairness, Hillary has forever been her own worst enemy when campaigning. Both in 2008 and now again in 2016.

[BlaqueKatt]

Consider:

Each coin has a 1/2 probability (assuming a fair coin) of landing on whatever is called.

Six coins means that there is a 1/(2^6) chance of all six coins coming up as called.

That gives a value of 1/64, or approximately 0.0156, or 1.56% chance of that happening.

The odds are HUGELY against it.

congrats on a successful application of the gambler's fallacy

So here's where the gambler's fallacy comes in: Say you've tossed the coin nine times and amazingly, you got nine heads. You figure that the next toss will be tails, because the probability of getting ten heads in a row is one in 1024, which is unlikely to happen!

The problem with this reasoning is that you're not looking at the chances of getting ten heads in a row, you're looking at the chances of getting one heads in a row. The heads that already happened no longer have a 50% chance of happening, they already happened, so their probability is 1. When you flip again the odds for that flip will be 50-50, same as it ever was.

[TheHuckster]

congrats on a successful application of the gambler's fallacy

That's only applicable for each coin flip. If you are flipping a fair coin and the previous 5 times you got heads, then the next flip is still a 50/50 chance it will result in tails.

BUT, as a whole, flipping 6 heads in a row has a very low chance.

[TheRoo]

I think the implication is that it's not a fair coin flip. I think 6 flips is a bit low to conclude that it was biased towards Clinton, but if I were to flip a coin 50 times for example, and it came up heads each time, that is strong evidence suggesting that it is not a fair coin.

In this case though, is there any other evidence that the coin flip was biased? I would suspect that the potential negatives of getting caught fixing a caucus for a couple of delegates would not be worth the relatively small gain. Plus, keep in mind that this is not the final delegate tally for Iowa. They still need to go through their county and state conventions to get the final tally. All of that compounded with how far ahead Clinton is in most other states, I can't imagine anyone in her situation risking big leads in other states due to bad press to pick up a handful of delegates to go to the county conventions.

[BlaqueKatt]

That's only applicable for each coin flip. If you are flipping a fair coin and the previous 5 times you got heads, then the next flip is still a 50/50 chance it will result in tails.

BUT, as a whole, flipping 6 heads in a row has a very low chance.

the link I provided has all the math and probability. Previous results have no bearing on probability(that's the fallacy, thinking it does) for subsequent coin flips.

they are two unrelated things. the previous five flips have ZERO to do with the sixth.

The gambler's fallacy is the belief that the chances of something happening with a fixed probability become higher or lower as the process is repeated.

source
here's a coin flip simulator with an explanation and graphing

[KabeRinnaul]

the link I provided has all the math and probability. Previous results have no bearing on probability(that's the fallacy, thinking it does) for subsequent coin flips.

they are two unrelated things. the previous five flips have ZERO to do with the sixth.

That's not what he's saying. Huckster is right.

Having flipped five coins and getting five heads, the odds of the sixth coin coming up head is 50%.

Having flipped zero coins, the odds of the next six coming up heads is 1.56%

[TheHuckster]

That's not what he's saying. Huckster is right.

Having flipped five coins and getting five heads, the odds of the sixth coin coming up head is 50%.

Having flipped zero coins, the odds of the next six coming up heads is 1.56%

Exactly my point.

I'm not saying there's anything necessarily fishy about it. I mean, in the beginning I gave Trump a 1.56% chance of ever getting this far, but here we are.

All I'm saying is Clinton's current coin flip statistics as a whole adds up to a 1.56% chance of happening, even if each of those individual coin flips were each 50/50.

[Canarr]

Guys, this one's been debunked already. There were more than six coin flips, so Clinton didn't win 100%.

[TheHuckster]

Guys, this one's been debunked already. There were more than six coin flips, so Clinton didn't win 100%.

According to Snopes there were an unknown number of coin flips, but the number was "at least 6 or 7."

I have to say, the fact that there isn't better reporting of this is somewhat concerning, especially with how many recent elections have been close and controversially decided.

I'm still not convinced or concerned that there was rigging involved, but shouldn't there be more transparency as to how close votes are decided just to diminish the controversy over them and, you know, improve the confidence in voters that everything was done legitimately and not invite claims of doubt and uncertainty?

[Canarr]

I kind of thought the whole point of these obscure methods used in pre-selecting the presidential candidate was to make sure that almost nobody understands how it works...