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Originally posted by tinkthank:
OK, but I thought that statistics were also used over time to consolidate possible worlds?

You're confusing "probability" and "average", and forget to .. forget past
So for example :
If I plan to flip a coin 2 times, what I know is that heads has a 50% chance of coming out, so in average will appear 1 time out of the 2.
Now this is different from the probability to see *at least once* heads, which is the inverse of the chance to never see it (50 % of 50% = 25%), so 75%
But suppose heads comes up the 1st time. Now for the second time our previous expectations are obsolete, and again heads has a 50% of showing up.
Even if heads comes up 99 times ina row it has STILL a 50% chance of coming up next time - even if AT START the chance of that particular series was very tiny (0.5^99 = nada approx ).
Clearer ?

[ March 11, 2004, 15:29: Message edited by: PDF ]