RT
I just came accross this post and thought I would reply and clear up a few things.
I can handle jimmy just fine by myself. He is just a windbag as far as I am concerned and
does not understand his own preaching. It's easy to see why his system failed. I once
knew someone just like him that went to a Jr college for a couple semisters and thought he
knew everything. Funny thing is, that guys name way jimmy too.
When his method is challanged he replys with insults. He acts like he just learnt this stuff a
couple weeks ago. All the information he uses comes from a couple of websites and I see
nothing he has posted that shows any original thinking.
Consider a simple coin toss where you only have two possible outcomes 1=heads-up,
#2=heads-down. If a player has nothing bet on the outcome he/she will make a simple quick
choice calling or picking at random.
However if the same person has a vested interest in the outcome such as winning or loosing
money, pride ect, they may begin to make decisions based on data aquired from past outcomes.
Lets say again that we wager a dime on each toss. Most people will just make a random choice
heads or tails and if they win then he/she is more likely to do the same with the next toss. Next
say that a person is down and missed the last five tosses. He/she may then begin to work out a
method of selecting his/her next choice trying to improve their chances. Since they only have heads
or tails to choose from and a simple random choice has failed the last five outcomes they may begin
to add data from past outcomes to help make their next choice.
This is where jimmy says that people fall into the gamblers fallacy. The next toss still has a 50/50
chance for heads or tails and trying to use past data to predict what will happen next in his thoughts
makes you guilty of the fallacy. If one thinks that the next draw must be tails because the last 5
were heads then yes that woud be a fallacy. But If a person begins to think that something about
the toss may show a bias for heads and chooses heads for the next draw based on this information
then this is not a fallacy.
The fallacy would be believing the next toss must be a tails because the last 5 were heads.
If the fallacy is is trying to use data to help in the prediction of a random event then almost every
choice we make in life would fall into this fallacy.
I will coin a new term "The Poker-Face fallacy". Many players watch the expressions of other
players to gauge the strength of a players hand. However if a player knows that others are
watching he/she might give false expressions which lead to an incorrect analysis. The same
thing could be said of choosing a stock based on the reports released by the company who's
books could have been cooked. A sporting event could be won or lost based on the performance
of one player who has taken a bribe. Nothing is certian before it has happened. Random to me is
a word to describe that which was not observed. It would be very easy to select the winning
numbers after the draw but what good would that be. Jimmy also likes to use the "fooled by
randomness" to explain that if you do win a little more often than the odds would allow then
this is simply a function of random. Meaning that random is responsible and what you think of
as skill or a result of the data you used or anything else for that matter was just a random event.
Next to give proof to his website wisdom he ask for a set of P-3 numbers that he can apply to the
33 year history of the PA lottery which he will then seek to prove how much you would have lost over
the same time frame had you played the set every day. If you give him a set that did hit a few more
times then expected then he will accuse you of getting the set after the fact. If you try and make a
ligit complaint as to his method he resorts to childish remarks and makes fun of people showing his
real inner character. If a persons system uses different fitering methods based on some bias he/she
might have or believed they have found which leads them to change how they play on any given day
rendering his backtest useless then they are accused of being untruthful.
RL