The Gambler’s Fallacy

By Deane Barker •

Also known as: Ergodicity, Loss Chasing

Many situations have an equal chance of outcome no matter how many times they repeat. We falsely think that since Outcome X has happened many times in a row, that will somehow affect the next outcome, making it more likely to be Outcome Y.

Examples

If you flip a coin and it comes up heads 100 times in a row, there’s still a perfectly equal chance of heads or tails on the 101st flip. A result of tails is not “due,” in any sense.

In 2003, the number 53 didn’t show up in Italy’s lottery for two years, causing people to bet increasingly larger sums of money on it, convinced that the long gap in its appearance somehow increased the odds of it.

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