http://bjlkeng.github.io/enTue, 10 Mar 2026 20:54:59 GMTNikola (getnikola.com)http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttp://bjlkeng.github.io/posts/gamblers-fallacy-and-the-law-of-small-numbers/Brian Keng<div class="cell border-box-sizing text_cell rendered"><div class="prompt input_prompt"> </div><div class="inner_cell"> <div class="text_cell_render border-box-sizing rendered_html"> <p>Games and gambling have been part of human cultures around the world for millennia. Nowadays, the connection between games of chance and mathematics (in particular probability) are so obvious that it is taught to school children. However, the mathematics of games and gambling only started to formally <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling#History">develop</a> in the 17th century with the works of multiple mathematicians such as Fermat and Pascal. It is then no wonder that many incorrect beliefs around gambling have formed that are "intuitive" from a layman's perspective but fail to pass muster when applying the rigor of mathematics.</p> <p>In this post, I want to discuss how surprisingly easy it is to be fooled into the wrong line of thinking even when approaching it using mathematics. We'll take a look from both a theoretical (mathematics) point of view looking at topics such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy">Gambler's Fallacy</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization">law of small numbers</a> as well as do some simulations using code to gain some insight into the problem. This post was inspired by a paper I recently came across a paper by Miller and Sanjurjo<a href="http://bjlkeng.github.io/posts/gamblers-fallacy-and-the-law-of-small-numbers/#fn-1">^[1]</a> that explains the surprising result of how easily we can be fooled.</p> <p><a href="http://bjlkeng.github.io/posts/gamblers-fallacy-and-the-law-of-small-numbers/">Read more…</a> (12 min remaining to read)</p></div></div></div>Gambler's FallacyLaw of Large NumbersLaw of Small Numbersprobabilityhttp://bjlkeng.github.io/posts/gamblers-fallacy-and-the-law-of-small-numbers/Sun, 01 Nov 2015 15:08:11 GMT