On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:29:59 GMT, Jose
wrote:

If each jump carries a 1-in-10000 chance of dying, wouldn't the 1000th
jump also carry a 1-in-10000 chance of dying?
Yes. But the odds of being dead before reaching the 10,000th jump
increase with each jump you make.
The more times the coin turns up heads, the more likely the next toss
will be tails?

Actuary's numbers relate to populations, not individuals.

But you knew that. You just left out the smiley

No, I meant it as I stated. The "population" in question is the
population of coin tosses (or jumps).

Suppose you have an exploding coin. It explodes (with great violence)
when it falls heads, and doesn't when it falls tails. If you flip that
coin once, you stand a fifty fifty chance of being dead from it.

If you keep flipping the coin all day, you stand a much greater chance
of being dead at the end of the day, even though if you survive, you
stand only a fifty fifty chance of being killed by the NEXT coin toss.

But I think you knew this too. With a statisitics discussion (like
this) it's hard to know whether the misunderstanding is =in= the basic
math, or in precisely what is being said =about= the (understood) basic
math.

Well, I *do* like the exploding coin.

Don