Re:The Infamous Coin Toss
by falsandtru on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @10:54PM
(#36980823)
What percentage of people will lose money is also very important but does not seem to be written. What percentage?
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Almost every person who plays the game will see their money decay towards zero as time goes to infinity.
Re:The Infamous Coin Toss
by falsandtru on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @11:26PM
(#36980993)
Knowing the time scale is very important.
Re:The Infamous Coin Toss
by chronolitus on Thursday August 03, 2023 @06:58AM
(#36984037)
but, since it is somewhat like a random walk, isn't it guaranteed that if you go on for infinitely many tosses, at some point you will be very rich?
Re:The Infamous Coin Toss
by chronolitus on Thursday August 03, 2023 @07:01AM
(#36984067)
if true, an interesting question is - on average - how many tosses are needed for you to reach some arbitrary value (e.g. $1M)?
It's exactly like a random walk... with downward drift. If you take the log of the wealth, the steps are: log(1.5) = 0.18, log(0.6) = -0.22. So at each step, there's a 50% chance you go up 0.18, and a 50% chance you go down 0.22.
Random walks with downward drift don't inevitably go up arbitrarily high like ones without drift.
Re:The Infamous Coin Toss
by falsandtru on Thursday August 03, 2023 @03:17AM
(#36982449)
The percentage of losers would increase slowly and linearly from 50%.