Premium
Numbers defy the law of large numbers
Author(s) -
Falk Ruma,
Lann Avital Lavie
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
teaching statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.425
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1467-9639
pISSN - 0141-982X
DOI - 10.1111/test.12031
Subject(s) - coin flipping , law of large numbers , mathematics , mathematical economics , econometrics , statistics , law , political science , random variable
Summary As the number of independent tosses of a fair coin grows, the rates of heads and tails tend to equality. This is misinterpreted by many students as being true also for the absolute numbers of the two outcomes, which, conversely, depart unboundedly from each other in the process. Eradicating that misconception, as by coin‐tossing experiments, should be incorporated early on into learning the law of large numbers.