Probability - How does it work?!

When we say that 100 heads or 100 tails is near impossible, we don't mean it is less likely as an individual sequence than 99 heads with specifically the second toss being a tail, or 99 heads with the 55th toss being a tail, etc. What we normally mean is that the chance of picking out that one random sequence is astronomically smaller than simply betting on ANY of the massive massive number of other undisclosed random sequences.

^^^^Yes but you're only considering a very specific example of equally probable events and the order matters. Others and myself were pointing out situations where the order is not important and often what is of interest is the frequency of occurance, not exactly when it happened.

@eamonnog yes I agree. It's a different interest in the outcomes. All outcomes are equally likely but this tells us nothing useful...
Not arguing Help, just more broad applications

As I said, we are all absolutely agreed on the equal possibility of each individual sequence...

I'll give it one more go... while 100 tails or heads is of equal probability to any ONE other specifically noted sequence, this is not what people are betting about or generally referring to.

As you can see we've been posting the same thing all night. We all accepted that very simple point from the beginning but saw it as irrelevant to the main issue at hand. You simply chose to ignore these quotes and (rather infuriatingly) kept posting responses that made out that we didnt get it.

I quoted from your own post (verbatim) - this was done before you edited your post and regardless of the edit I can't see how what I quoted from you was NOT what you were saying.

I am going to have to go with teome's 'up my own arse' and with your 'pedantic troll' and call it a day, we have obviously not convinced each other of our positions and as much as I am interested in this - and both your's and teome's posts - once the name calling kicks in these conversations start to lose their attraction for me. [/flounce]

I fail to see how my post was in any way insulting. The troll face thing is a forum joke when you think someone is being amusingly provocative.

As I said in my last post... Your posts imply that the cliche about tossing a coin for 100 heads in a row is somehow dependent on someone else betting on an alternative (but equally probable) ***specific individual ***sequence. That is absurd. And I'm sure you'll find that out in a bar some night when you refuse to pay up coz the other fella didnt predict the exact sequence either ; )