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The prescient power of indifference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Leonard M. Wapner
Leonard M. Wapner*
Affiliation:
Division of Mathematical Sciences, El Camino College, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance, CA 90506, USA e-mail: lwapner@elcamino.edu

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Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.

Sidney J. Harris

Lack of information is generally considered a hindrance to inquiry. Surprisingly, a simple mathematical argument, relying on the Principle of Indifference, shows there are situations where the opposite holds. Even more surprisingly, this indifference allows one to guess, with a success rate greater than 50%, the outcome of a coin toss or any other experiment having two equiprobable outcomes. The scheme is based on work by American statistician David Blackwell (1919–2010) and a principle of mathematical probability attributed to Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli (1655–1705).

Information

Type
Articles
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 103 , Issue 556 , March 2019, pp. 41 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 2019 

References

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4. Stein, J. and Wapner, L. M., How to predict the flip of a coin, The mathematics of very entertaining subjects Vol. 3, Princeton University Press (2019).Google Scholar