|
ting its soundness, we may content ourselves with recording the result. On the first day our Englishman won more than seven hundred pounds in a single hour. ' His exultation was boundless. He thought he had really discovered the "philosopher's stone." Off he went to his bankers, and transmitted the greater portion of his winnings to London. The next day he played and lost fifty pounds; and the following day he achieved the same result, and had to. write to town for remittances. In fine, in a week he had lost all the money he won at first, with the exception of fifty pounds, which he reserved to take
him home; and being thoroughly convinced of the exceeding fickleness of fortune, he has never staked a sixpence since, and does all in his power to dissuade others from playing.'
lie took a very sound principle of probabilities as the supposed basis of his system, though in reality ho entirely mistook the nature of the principle. That principle is, that where the chances for one or another of two results are equal for each trial, and many trials are made, the number of events of one kind will bear to those of the other kind a very nearly equal ratio: the greater the number of events, the more nearly will the ratio tend to equality. This is perfectly true; and nothing could be safer than to wager on this principle. Let a man toss a coin for an hour, and I would wager confidently that neither will ' heads' exceed ' tails,' or 'tails' exceed 'heads' in a greater ratio than that of 21 to 20. Let him toss for a day, and I would wager as confidently that the inequality will not be greater than that represented by the ratio of 101 to 100. Let the tossing be repeated day after day for a year, and I would wager my life that the disproportion will be less than that represented by the ratio of 1,001 to 1,000. Yet so little does this principle bear the interpretation placed upon it by the inventor of the system above described, that if on any occasion during this long-con-tinned process of tossings ' head had been tossed (as it certainly would often be) no less than twenty times in
|
