[cortesoft]

Yeah, I always make an example with coin flips to show how this is true.... lets say heads is success and tails is failure.

Flip 100 coins. Take the ones that 'failed' (landed tails) and scold them. Flip them again. Half improved! Praise the ones that got heads the first time. Flip them again. Half got worse :(

Clearly, scolding is more effective than praising.

[bbcbasic]

That's a brilliant example. I wont forget that now.

[abhi_kr]

Except, coins are not humans with emotions, and neither can they dupe probability to improve their outcome. The 50 heads(success) that you left are not going to do any better than the 50 tails you scolded. You are just changing the sample space in a biased fashion to prove your point.

[cortesoft]

I think you are totally missing my point. The whole point I am trying to make centers on the fact that the coins are all actually equal. The observed difference in performance is entirely due to chance.

While, of course, human performance is not always equal in the same way our coins are, the fact that performance (or whatever it is you are measuring) will still regress towards the mean still holds true. The coin example just gives an extremely obvious demonstration about what is happening when things regress towards the mean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

[shitgoose]

hilarious! thank you!