Re:A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers
by mikeash on Monday March 14, 2016 @02:43PM
(#11284626)
Do I understand your first scenario correctly, that if for example you flip TTHH, you stop there, count that as "took four flips to get to HH," count nothing for HT, and then start over?
Seems like you're just taking a biased sample, which cancels out the differences. To take an extreme example, imagine one candidate is HHHHHHHHHH and the other candidate is any other sequence of ten flips. In the "try until you get either one" scenario, the average number of flips for either one will be 10. Testing them independently, the average number of flips for the second one will be slightly over 10, and for HHHHHHHHHH it'll be huge.
Seems like you're just taking a biased sample, which cancels out the differences. To take an extreme example, imagine one candidate is HHHHHHHHHH and the other candidate is any other sequence of ten flips. In the "try until you get either one" scenario, the average number of flips for either one will be 10. Testing them independently, the average number of flips for the second one will be slightly over 10, and for HHHHHHHHHH it'll be huge.