Throwing 1,000 Consecutive Heads

CrowCross said:
That makes no sense....as always, you grab numerous out of the air with no logical reason.
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Since half of the coin tosses come up tails, we need two cards for each head to keep the population roughly the same from generation to generation. The population of most species stays roughly the same from generation to generation.

You can run the calculations for yourself on a spreadsheet: 51%/49% H/T, 50%/50% H/T, 49%/51% H/T and see what the populations are after 1,000 generations.
 
rossum said:
Since half of the coin tosses come up tails, we need two cards for each head to keep the population roughly the same from generation to generation. The population of most species stays roughly the same from generation to generation.

You can run the calculations for yourself on a spreadsheet: 51%/49% H/T, 50%/50% H/T, 49%/51% H/T and see what the populations are after 1,000 generations.
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Better still, run the entire experiment yourself, then get back to us when you have finished. We will still be here, honest.
 
rossum said:
Since half of the coin tosses come up tails, we need two cards for each head to keep the population roughly the same from generation to generation. The population of most species stays roughly the same from generation to generation.

You can run the calculations for yourself on a spreadsheet: 51%/49% H/T, 50%/50% H/T, 49%/51% H/T and see what the populations are after 1,000 generations.
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You said it generations stay the same according to the evidence as any species who are altered revert back to their form after so many generations instead of changing to other forms like the evos say. And give us a time frame for how long you would be there until you could throw 1,000 consecutive heads in a row?
 
rossum said:
Can we throw 1,000 consecutive heads on a fair coin? Yes, providing we go the right way about it. The raw chance is low, 1 in 2^1000, but it can be done.

Start with 5,000 blank cards, plus a lot more spare cards. And pens, we'll need pens to write on the cards. Plus, of course, a coin to toss.

For each of your 5,000 cards toss the coin. If it comes up tails, throw that card away. If it comes up heads, take two blank card, mark each with an 'H' for heads, and put them in a new pile. You should end up with about 5,000 cards in the new pile, each marked with an 'H'.

Now start on the new pile, which is now the old pile, if that makes sense. For each card in the (new) old pile throw the coin. If it comes up tails, throw that card away. It it comes up heads, pick two blank cards and mark them 'HH', because you now have two consecutive heads. Throw away the old card with a single 'H' on it. Again you will have about 5,000 cards with "HH".

Repeat the process. Tails means throw the card away. Heads means two more cards, each with an additional 'H', because you rolled heads.

Repeat, repeat, repeat until you end up with a tired wrist and about 5,000 cards each with 1,000 consecutive H's on them.

Looking back through the route by which every card in your final pile got there, each card is the result of 1,000 consecutive heads on the coin. Any time tails came up, that card was binned, so there are no tails on the final set of cards, only heads. One thousand consecutive heads.

How does this thought experiment relate to evolution?

Throwing tails is equivalent to not having any descendants. Throwing heads is equivalent to having descendants. In the real world, the chances are not 50/50, but there is some probability. Every one of your ancestors managed to breed successfully. If even one ancestor didn't succeed, then you wouldn't be here. You are the end of a very very long line of successful breeders, with not one single failure. Not one.

The H's on the cards are an analogue of the DNA passed from parents to offspring. That DNA is the DNA of successful breeders, and only of successful breeders—all heads with no tails. Unsuccessful breeders did not pass their DNA on to any modern descendants; if the coin came up tails that card was thrown away.

The 5,000 current cards are the breeding population. Each round of die rolls is a generation. Throwing away old cards is the previous generation dying away.

The thought experiment with cards, coin and pen is a very simple model of evolution. It shows how evolution can beat seemingly impossible odds by spreading out the odds over time. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. A lot of steps will come after, but only successful breeders can take each following step on the journey.
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You are manipulating it for your results to have even a slight chance. You should say you have a coin to toss and there are no cards to mark and you and I know it is impossible to roll 1,000 heads in a row.
 
Nathan P said:
You said it generations stay the same according to the evidence as any species who are altered revert back to their form after so many generations instead of changing to other forms like the evos say.
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All species change over generations. 100,000 years ago humans did not have widespread lactase persistence mutations. When some humans started pastoral agriculture, raising cattle, sheep, goats etc. Today the descendants of those pastoralists have lactase persistence mutations, which enable adults to digest milk, as supplied by cows, sheep, goats. Those mutations are present in about one third of the current human population.

Evolution happens and can be observed if you are prepared to see it.

Nathan P said:
And give us a time frame for how long you would be there until you could throw 1,000 consecutive heads in a row?
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How long is a generation? For bacteria it can be about 30 minutes. Small animals take weeks or months. Elephants take longer than humans.

Nathan P said:
You are manipulating it for your results to have even a slight chance. You should say you have a coin to toss and there are no cards to mark and you and I know it is impossible to roll 1,000 heads in a row.
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The chance I gave was the chance of reproducing or not. By observation the chance of any individual reproducing is greater than 50%, because we can observe that most populations are steady over time. That means that on average every individual has one offspring that reaches reproductive age and itself reproduces.

In my scenario half the individuals have 0 offspring and half have 2 offspring. That gives the observed one descendant on average per individual. That maintains a steady population.

Over time, my scenario does indeed produce 1,000 heads in a row, because any tails thrown are eliminated. That mirrors the face that all of your ancestors succeeded in reproducing. None of them failed, as shown by your presence here today.

As the saying goes: "If your parents didn't have any children, the chances are that you won't have any either."
 
rossum said:
To add a little more to my OP, 2^1000 is 1.07e+301, which is a huge number of possibilities. However, the coin flipping model I give does not have to examine all of those possibilities. Any sequence that starts: T... is never followed. That is half of all possible sequences. No time is wasted following them, because they start with tails. Similarly, sequences that start HT... are never followed further. That is again half of the remaining possible sequences. At each round of the model, half of the possible further sequencees are eliminated.

Despite the very large number of possible sequences that could be followed, the great majority of possible sequences are cut off short, and ignored thereafter. Because of that systematic weeding out of failing sequences at the earliest possible opportunity, the model quickly converges on the single allowed sequence: HHHH...HHH.
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That is misleading because I found your figures on Google and 2^1000 is after throwing them 100,000 times or like it says there is no reasonable chance to do it. Since we know it would take if possible a lot more than 100,000 times to roll 1,000 heads in a row your odds should read 2^100,000,000,000,000.
 
rossum said:
Since half of the coin tosses come up tails, we need two cards for each head to keep the population roughly the same from generation to generation. The population of most species stays roughly the same from generation to generation.
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As I said above, it doesn't reflect reality. As i also said before, you have used made up numbers.
 
CrowCross said:
It doesn't reflect reality.
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Populations tend to stay about the same size as they are limited by available resources. If the available resources increase then so will the size of the population. And vice versa.

So, it's a pretty good approximation of reality.
 
rossum said:
Looking back through the route by which every card in your final pile got there, each card is the result of 1,000 consecutive heads on the coin.
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Smoke and mirrors....considering a tails was thrown....the result was not 1000 consecutive heads.
 
Nathan P said:
That is misleading because I found your figures on Google and 2^1000 is after throwing them 100,000 times or like it says there is no reasonable chance to do it. Since we know it would take if possible a lot more than 100,000 times to roll 1,000 heads in a row your odds should read 2^100,000,000,000,000.
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You appear to forget that at each round we cut off half the possible results. You need to rework the calculation, since all throws after the first 'T' never happen. The scenario throws away cards after a tails. It only makes new cards when heads is thrown.

The scenario does not follow failing sequences. It cuts them off as soon as it is evident that they are failing. That means you cannot use a standard random probability calculation since the continuation of any sequence is not random.
 
CrowCross said:
As I said above, it doesn't reflect reality. As i also said before, you have used made up numbers.
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It reflects reality in that an organism will either have descendants or not. You are at liberty to rework the scenario will different probabilities of reproducing or not reproducing. By observation, most populations are reasonably stable from generation to generation, so you will need to include that in your analysis.
 
CrowCross said:
Smoke and mirrors....considering a tails was thrown....the result was not 1000 consecutive heads.
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Yes, tails were thrown, which mean that the sequence from that card was not carried forward into the next round. Only throws of heads got two cards carried forward into the next round. That models the fact that if your parents hadn't had any children then you would not be here.
 
rossum said:
Yes, tails were thrown, which mean that the sequence from that card was not carried forward into the next round. Only throws of heads got two cards carried forward into the next round. That models the fact that if your parents hadn't had any children then you would not be here.
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In fact he, and you and all of us, are only here because of thousands of generations of successful reproduction. If just one set of parents in our entire line of ancestors had failed to have offspring, we would not be here. What are the chances, eh?
 
rossum said:
Yes, tails were thrown, which mean that the sequence from that card was not carried forward into the next round. Only throws of heads got two cards carried forward into the next round. That models the fact that if your parents hadn't had any children then you would not be here.
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Thanks for confirming you have no clue on evolution.

NONE

Evolution insists for example with mutation you can roll a pair of dice and come up with a pair of 7's.

Why don't you learn maths?
 
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