Water Cooler Small Speak: Gambler’s Fallacy and Smash | by Maria Mouschoutzi, PhD | Sep, 2024

An intuitive and thorough rationalization of playing, luck, and threat to maintain you from trying silly

Picture by Amanda Jones on Unsplash

Water cooler small speak is a particular sort of small speak, usually noticed in workplace areas, significantly round a water cooler. There, very similar to up to date cavemen gathered round a fireplace, workers incessantly collect and share all types of company gossip, myths, and legends, inaccurate scientific opinions, indiscreet private anecdotes, or outright lies. Something goes. So, on this publish, I focus on a water cooler scientific opinion I overheard the opposite day that actually left me speechless.

Right here’s the water cooler opinion of at the moment’s publish:

‘In a sport of roulette, for those who initially lose however manage to pay for to proceed playing — doubling your wager every time to cowl all earlier losses — you’ll finally win. In different phrases, for those who lose, say, 100 instances, your luck goes to finally flip round, and also you’ll win — and that is supposedly a superb technique.’

🤪🎲

Intuitively, this concept might sound to make some sense however is mistaken in so many alternative methods. In actuality, it’s a horrible technique — so horrible that there even are particular phrases in tradition and arithmetic to explain simply how…