A production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead inspired two blog posts about coin flips and probability.
As they keep flipping coins and Rosencrantz’s purse continues to grow, Guildenstern concludes that there are several possible explanations for the extremely unlikely run of heads:
“One: I’m willing it. Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past…
“Two: time has stopped dead, and the single experience of one coin being spun once has been repeated ninety times…
“Three: divine intervention, that is to say, a good turn from above concerning him, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me, cf. Lot’s wife…
“Four: a spectacular vindication of the principle that each individual coin spun individually is as likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does.”
Read the full posts at Roots of Unity and the AMS Blog on Math Blogs.
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