ProbabilityQuantum

Most of this course relied on the fact that things like coins, or dice, or roulette wheels are completely random. However, that is not really true – we already learned that Edward Thorpe managed to predict the outcome of roulette.

Suppose we toss a coin: the chance of it landing heads is 0.5. If we knew which way the coin was facing just before it left the hand, we might be able to make a slightly better prediction, such as 0.58 or 0.41. If we also knew the weight and size of the coin, and the angle, position and speed as it left the hand, we could use the laws of physics – gravity, friction and air resistance – to model the motion of the coin and to predict the outcome. Finally, if we knew the exact position of every atom in the coin and of all the air molecules surrounding it, we could create a computer simulation to accurately predict what will happen.