Originally Posted by
A Squared
Umm, no, you're falling prey to a common fallacy; That previous, unrelated events somehow affect the probability of something happening. It is what leads people to erroneously conclude that the probability of a fair coin toss coming up heads is different if the previous coin toss came up heads. It's not. The probability of any single fair coin toss coming up heads is .5, it doesn't matter that the previous coin toss was heads, it doesn't matter that the previous 5 coin tosses were heads, when you toss that coin, the chances are still 50/50 heads/tails. Whether or not the flight crew removes the pitot cover on any given day is like a single coin toss. There's a certain probability that it will be forgotten, and that probability is not affected by an unrelated event whcih occurred the previous day. The probability of 2 consecutive coin tosses both coming up heads is 0.5 X 0.5 = 0.25, but that is not the same question as the probability that the next coin toss will be heads; regardless of what happened on the last coin toss, the next coin toss will have a .5 probability of heads.
I see your point, and I don’t want to get embroiled in a statistical discussion, but what you are saying is that the chance of flipping two different coins one after another and having them both come up heads is the same as flipping one on it’s own coming up heads. Am I right?