The Gambler's Fallacy

Julian Baggini: "When people say they are “due a win”, in sport, gambling or, more metaphorically, in life in general, they are more often than not doing little more than expressing a hope born of despair. But sometimes they also believe that in a very literal sense their luck is due to change.

The idea, usually vaguely rather than explicitly held, is that nature balances things up in the long run, so a recent run of results going one way requires a balancing set of results going the other. Otherwise, as Hamlet might put it, the world is out of joint.

Perhaps the clearest evidence that many people do think like this is the popularity of web sites that tell you how many times numbers have been picked in national and state lotteries. The fact that people consult these sites only makes sense if they believe that past selections can provide some kind of indicator of the likelihood of future ones.

The futility of this kind of analysis is evident from the fact that you could interpret the past data in two totally opposite ways. On one view, the numbers that come up most frequently are luckier, and so should be selected. On the other, the ones that have come up least frequently are overdue for an appearance. So which do you pick?

continued: butterfliesandwheels.com

related: more "bad moves"