On 6/25/2025 at 5:46 PM, amelia said:

if I flip a coin 1000 times and get 600 heads, won’t the next flips be more likely to be tails to balance it out?

@ameliaNo, that’s exactly the misconception! Over MASSIVE sample sizes (think millions of flips), the percentage will approach 50/50, but not because individual flips become biased. It’s because the early “imbalance” becomes statistically insignificant. If you flip 1,000,000 times after your 600 heads scenario, you might end up with something like 500,300 heads total out of 1,001,000 flips very close to 50%. The individual flips after your initial 1000 don’t “know” they need to compensate.