Talk:Law of averages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The gambler in the illustrations really does demonstrate poor logic if his estimated probability of a coin flip showing 'heads' is often greater than 1. I assume someone mistook the odds (e.g. 4:1) for the probability? --Msr657 20:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, having a probability over 1 is not possible; there's an error there. GlassOnion 21:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

If no one's going to fix that, I might remove it someday. It's more confusing than explanatory, and it's not really about the law of averages. Msr657 09:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Murphy's Law vs. Law of Averages

I have heard of a saying, somewhat of "If we have lots of little problems along the way, this will satisfy the problem gods and we won't have a big problem opening night [for a show]." Is this part of Murphy's law or the law of averages? Dachshund2k3 00:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds to me like wishful thinking. Murphy's Law is usually stated as "whatever can go wrong, will", which is quite the opposite sentiment, and the Law of Averages doesn't have much to say about the probability of a particular outcome for a single event. It's repetition that brings the law into play. Msr657 09:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tyranny of averages

I've created an article that is the converse of this, and welcome any comments/contributions. I've not yet x-ref'd it, in case people feel it ought to simply be merged and a redirect placed in its stead. --Belg4mit 20:11, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page Edited

I have taken the liberty to fix this page up to include properly lexed math formulas. I also redid a couple of sentences. I hope you all enjoy it. mikecucuk 18:46, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I gotta say, I didn't like the math section. This article is just about the lay term. We don't need a proof of the LLN here. Shivan Bird (talk) 22:09, 13 May 2008 (UTC)