(OT) mathematicians-discover-prime-conspiracy

[Andrew Gallagher]

> On 19 Mar 2016, at 15:34, Peter Lebbing <peter at digitalbrains.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 18/03/16 14:26, Andrew Gallagher wrote:
>> Alternatively, we could consider how we treat the sequence history after
>> a "success". Do we wipe the slate clean once we get ten heads and start
>> over? Or if the eleventh toss was another head, do we consider that a
>> second sequence of ten heads?
> 
> Ah, in my code, I indeed wipe the slate clean. It feels more appropriate; and
> since I get the same expected number of throws as the article states, apparently
> so do they.

You are correct, as this is implicit in the formulation of the problem: start flipping coins and see how long it takes for a particular pattern to turn up once. The implicit assumption is that you then stop, rather than continuing to accumulate data. And that's where the problems start. :-)

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