Pure Wisdom

CHAPTER 51

Luck

Flip a coin and what do you get? Probability tells us it’s equally likely to fall on heads or tails. Flip a coin a hundred times and what do you expect to see? Most people expect to see an even split of heads and tails. That’s approximately what I saw. But what I didn’t expect to see was 15 heads in a row. If I were ‘willing’ heads, I’d be thinking I’m the master of the universe. And if I had put money on heads, during that run, I’d be thinking I had a valuable skill.

But we forget, I know I did, that a 50 per cent chance of getting heads or tails doesn’t mean you’re going to get an even distribution. Heads will not always follow tails. But when we get a string of repeated outcomes, we find it hard to believe it’s random. ...