"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin.


Most people, even if they're not stupid, don't understand poperbility. I once had a conversation with another student... I don't recall what she studied, but she was taking a course in elementary probability at the time. She was convinced that it would be a vital tactic to wait at a roulette table until a color has come up 4 or five times in a row, and then bet on the opposite color. After about 30 minutes I was ready to kill her with an axe and set myself on fire.

A friend of mine from my home game is still convinced that a 4:1 probability is the same as 1:1, because "both can happen".
We actually set up a bet where I got AK and he got 72 (he chickened out on the AA vs AK), and we ran it 10 times for 1€ each. He won 6 of them... so... back to square 1.