Strange Coincidence
If you follow the stock market, you are likely to hear people boasting that their buy and sell strategies allegedly only generate profits and never losses. Anyone who has read A Random Walk down Wall Street [1] knows that wild stock market speculation only leads to player bankruptcy in the long term. But what about the few fund managers who have managed their deposits for 20 years in such a way that they actually score profits year after year?
According to A Random Walk down Wall Street, even in a coin toss competition with enough players, there would be a handful of "masterly" throwers who, to the sheer amazement of all other players, seemingly throw heads 20 times in a row without tails ever showing up. But how likely is that in reality?
Heads or Tails?
It is easy to calculate that the probability of the same side of the coin turning up twice in succession is 0.5x0.5 (i.e., 0.25), since the probability of a specific side showing once is 0.5 and the likelihood of two independent events coinciding works out to be the multiplication of the two individual probabilities. The odds on a hat trick (three successes in a row) are therefore 0.5^3=0.125, and a series of 20 is quite unlikely at 0.5^20=0.000000954. But still, if a program only tries often enough, it will happen sometime, and this is what I am testing for today. The short Python coin_throw() generator in Listing 1 [2] simulates coin tosses with a 50 percent probability of heads or tails coming up.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs Transitions to Linux
Another major organization has decided to kick Microsoft Windows and Office to the curb in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.