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by JacobJans 2683 days ago
I don't think that's the right logic.

Say there are ten "events" that have had recessions follow them (or not). Each of these events happened 10 times.

For the first type of a event, a recession happened just once afterwards.

For the second type of event, a recession happened twice.

For the third type of event, a recession happened three times

The third, a recession happened three times.

The fourth, a recession happened four out of ten times.

The fifth, a recession happened five times.

Etc...

This has very little to do with flipping a coin, and much more to do with deciding the right time to pay attention.

Half a chance of getting hit by a car is not the same as "flipping a coin."

Generally, throughout the past hundred years or so, there has been much less than a 50% chance to enter a recession. I don't know the numbers, but for any given year, it could be 10%. If there is now a 50% chance, isn't that a 5 fold increase in risk?

1 comments

Yes, this is just pretty simple Monty Hall/Bayes stuff, your example is on point.