“The man in the street, and also the philosopher K. Marbe, believe that after a run of seventeen heads tail becomes more probable. This argument has nothing to do with imperfections of physical coins; it endows nature with memory, or, in our terminology, it denies the stochastic independence of successive trials. Marbe's theory cannot be refuted by logic but is rejected because of empirical support.”

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VI, The Binomial And The Poisson Distributions, p. 147.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The man in the street, and also the philosopher K. Marbe, believe that after a run of seventeen heads tail becomes more…" by William Feller?
William Feller photo
William Feller 30
Croatian-American mathematician 1906–1970

Related quotes

“If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic.”

David Stove (1927–1994) Australian philosopher

The Rationality of Induction, Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. Page 176, last paragraph.

Max Tegmark photo
Tertullian photo
African Spir photo

“Science progresses by trial and error, by conjectures and refutations. Only the fittest theories survive.”

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 5, Introducing falsification, p. 60.

Richard von Mises photo

“I am prepared to concede without further argument that all the theoretical constructions, including geometry, which are used in the various branches of physics are only imperfect instruments to enable the world of empirical fact to be reconstructed in our minds.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

First Lecture, The Definition of Probability, p. 8
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

Alan Greenspan photo

“The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Source: 2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008), Chapter Twenty-Five, "The Delphic Future", p. 465.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Some Mistakes of Moses

Related topics