2010-08-13, 01:09 AM
Stereo Wrote:But if you've already flipped the coin 10 times and got HHHHHHHHHH then the prior chance can be ignored - the only possible sequences are HHHHHHHHHHT and HHHHHHHHHHH. You'll never flip that 11th coin and end up with 6 tails.
Yes, this is true. The point I'm making is that yes, as you said before HHHHHHHHHHT is just as rare as HHHHHHHHHHH as permutations, but as combinations, the former is 11 times as likely. It's quite true that past flips have no impact on future flips. I just wasn't making my point with the assumption that we had flipped 10 coins already - I was commenting on those first 10 flips themselves.