Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coffield paradox

Coffield paradox was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete

Coffield paradox
Invented by a friend of the article's author, zero Google hits , and Mr. Coffield will see that his "paradox" is completely consistent with conventional probability theory as soon as he gets up to conditional probability. Nice to see people thinking, though. Securiger 14:31, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Let me just run through this - the odds of my flipping two coins and them turning out to be HH are 1/4... but the odds of my flipping the second coin and it being H are 1/2. This is not a paradox; in the latter case the first coin has already been tossed, so it's a chance of 1 of coming up H? I think that's it, anyhow. Mental exercise over, and vote delete, unless someone wants to merge the concept into conditional probability (although probably not under Coffield's name) as an example of how CP may seem counterintuitive. Shimgray
 * Delete. Do not redirect. Yes, nice to see people thinking, but not really nice to put stuff in an encyclopedia if you're not pretty sure it's right. Neologism; probably vanity; original research; and wrong. This is like saying that if you have already been dealt the ten, jack, queen, and king of hearts from a 52-card jokerless deck, the probability of being dealt the ace of hearts is both 1/48 (because there are forty-eight cards left) and 0.0000015391 (because you will have been dealt a royal flush and that's the probability of a royal flush). Before you're dealt any cards, the probability that the next five cards will be a royal flush is indeed tiny. But once you've already got the ten, jack, queen, and king of hearts, the most improbable part of the event has already occurred. With those four cards in your hand, the probability of completing the royal flush is no longer 0.0000015391; it's now much higher, 1/48 in fact. Agree with User:Shimgray that it would be nice to have a section of conditional probability devoted to explaining the concept in elementary language. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:45, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * P. S. The particular scenario described in the article be easily tested by flipping a real coin. A couple of hundred flips should provide clear and convincing evidence that the probability of flipping that second head is 1/2. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:24, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete Even as I was correcting the punctuation, I had the feeling this was a misunderstanding rather than a paradox. Thanks to the above for explaining this. Redlentil 17:25, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. I think this "paradox" was first mentioned by Pascal. Or Dirichlet. Or Fermat. Forgot which one, but certainly not this guy. Grue 17:30, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: DCEdwards1966 17:37, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete because the name of the article falls under vanity and non-noteworthiness and is thus unsalvagable. And if this were indeed Coffiels's then it'd be essentially original research, and poor research at that. DreamGuy 17:43, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. This is just a variant of similar questions posed by the Gambler's fallacy. The misunderstanding comes from trying to combine the probabilities of two different systems: one being a solitary coinflip in and of itself, independent of any that come before or after, and the second system being a series of coinflips, which starts getting into frequency probability. Inky 01:10, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. "... would appear equally valid" makes sense only until one thinks about it.  There are some charming "paradoxes" in probability theory, but this is just obtuseness.  The fact that it doesn't say who Coffield is doesn't help.  That could be remedied by adding that information if Coffield were the author of some thoughtful work on probability, but my guess is Coffield is the anonymous author of this article. Michael Hardy 01:25, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Good candicate for BJAODN. Going to save a copy to a subpage of my user page in case it doesn't make it there. Joke article. --Improv 07:27, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Author is either joking or hasn't heard of conditional probability, in which case they probably shouldn't be writing an article about probability. &mdash; Trilobite (Talk) 20:56, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete it. &mdash;[[en:RaD Man|RaD Man (talk)]] 08:40, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, delete, delete! L Durnan
 * Delete. --MPerel 09:43, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: As Securiger mentions in the introduction, it is obvious there is no paradox upon further study of probability.Raazer 08:16, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.