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by anikan_vader 1841 days ago
My comment is a joke as well. If you frame Buffon's needle game as a Martingale, playing until you get an answer that agrees with Fibonacci's previous work does not meet the preconditions for the optional stopping theorem. Intuitively, it's equivalent to starting with $1 and making fair bets with infinite credit until you have $2. Sure, it's possible, but it's not a "fair" betting game.

I just thought the quote from the article was unbelievably good -- "choosing his stopping point judiciously" is such a well-done understatement.

1 comments

Ooh, man I’m really not on the top of my game today. Thank you for the explanation!