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Next toss after a streak from an ordinary coin

Question

Someone takes an ordinary-looking coin out of their pocket and tosses it three times, getting heads each time. What would you estimate as the probability that the next toss is a head? How would your estimate change if it had come up heads 100100 times in a row?

Short answer

About 1/21/2 after three heads; close to 11 after a hundred. Three heads happens one time in eight with a fair coin, which barely shifts a strong prior that pocket coins are fair. A hundred heads has probability 2−1002^{-100} under fairness, so even a tiny prior weight on a trick or heavily biased coin dominates the posterior and the next toss is almost surely heads.

Adapted from Joshi, Denson & Downes, Quant Job Interview Questions and Answers, Q3.11, p.81; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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