Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Papa needs a brand new hurricane
Last night I was working on a presentation and had the Weather Channel on in the background. From the TV I hear a mayor of some Florida city say (I'm paraphrasing)
That's the Gambler's Fallacy!
Then I thought about it for a moment. Many climatic events follow a cyclical pattern. Whether caused by ENSO or some other process, Hurricanes do tend to run in cycles. Of course it's not just hurricanes that follow a discernable pattern. There are the seasons, tides, and bird migrations. Sunspots follow around a 9 year cycle. Earthquakes follow a pattern - faults will build up stress for a while before releasing. You can indeed be "overdue" for an earthquake.
Getting to my point, there are numerous everyday events whose cause is so complicated (chaotic really), that their occurence appear random. However, we are still able to discern the underlying patterns, as the mayor did in the case of the hurricanes.
I suspect the Gambler's Fallacy is caused by our repeated experience with seemingly random events that are in fact chaotic. These experiences train us to detect and expect patterns. So when we are faced with an experience that actually is random (and not chaotic), we naturally attempt to discern a pattern and fail.
And lose our shirts to the craps table in the process.
Comments(0) |
"We've been fortunate and haven't had a hurricane for a while. So I guess we're due."Immediately alarm bells go off in my head.
That's the Gambler's Fallacy!
Then I thought about it for a moment. Many climatic events follow a cyclical pattern. Whether caused by ENSO or some other process, Hurricanes do tend to run in cycles. Of course it's not just hurricanes that follow a discernable pattern. There are the seasons, tides, and bird migrations. Sunspots follow around a 9 year cycle. Earthquakes follow a pattern - faults will build up stress for a while before releasing. You can indeed be "overdue" for an earthquake.
Getting to my point, there are numerous everyday events whose cause is so complicated (chaotic really), that their occurence appear random. However, we are still able to discern the underlying patterns, as the mayor did in the case of the hurricanes.
I suspect the Gambler's Fallacy is caused by our repeated experience with seemingly random events that are in fact chaotic. These experiences train us to detect and expect patterns. So when we are faced with an experience that actually is random (and not chaotic), we naturally attempt to discern a pattern and fail.
And lose our shirts to the craps table in the process.
Comments(0) |
