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An example that should show this approach is wrong:

Suppose that the jar contains 500 double-head coins and 500 double-tail coins. You pull a coin from the jar, flip it 10 times, and get 10 heads. What is the probability it will come up heads next time?



That seems like a completely different problem to me, since all randomness is out of the system the moment you see the first flip.


OK, so now imagine that there are 1000000 double-headed coins, 1000000 double-tailed coins, and one fair coin. Now (1) there's still (potentially) randomness present, so it's not "completely different" from the original problem, but (2) the ignore-the-data approach gives an obviously wrong answer whereas using the data gives a believable answer.




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