It doesn't seem like that was implied. If I understand correctly, the goal of the illustration was just to emphasize that luck can play a huge factor in one's success (and therefore their "success" in these cases isn't anything that can be learned from or replicated).

You still have to flip the coin

A much better example would be to have all students run around a 400 meter track with some students having 1 - 100 meter head start.

No, that would completely miss the point.

This isn't about inequality or privilege, this is about survivorship bias. The entire point is to completely remove all those issues in a way that makes it obvious to everybody that the only possible explanation in this made-up example is blind luck.

In the real world, it isn't all blind luck, but sometimes there are cases where the luck signal does in fact overwhelm everything else, lotteries being a great example.

Yes, and these are _extreme_ examples. Examples that try to make success appear to be just luck.

"The entire point is to completely remove all those issues in a way that makes it obvious to everybody that the only possible explanation in this made-up example is blind luck."

Your racetrack analogies are deviating too far from the classroom example. If you want to model selective advantages, give one student additional coins to flip.

Some students would have to start at 600 meters with led shoes and weights in their hands. And another group should get to start at 200 meters on bikes.

when I read 'led shoes', I thought of the one that literally have LED on them and flash/glow. Then I realized it was meant to be the lead element (Pb), that's actually pronounced (led)...

Also typing/pronouncing/using 'LED lights' makes for a great tautology. ("Light emitting diode" lights)

English is weird, sometimes.

That's RAS Syndrome -- redundant acronym syndrome syndrome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

Try 100-200m head start, because 1-10m doesn't appropriately capture how successes compound over time.

LOL at 1-10 meters.

Why do you think so? The coin was flipped multiple (n) times, so the probability of total success is 0.5^n. For 10 coin flips, it is already less than 1/1000.

Alternatively, you can view it as a game that is repeated until one person is left. So the chance of success is 1/n where n is the number of people involved - independent of the random method chosen for selection (coin flip, rolling dices, or whatever).