Study Finds Roulette Wheel Still Unaware Red Came Up Seven Times In A Row
Researchers wrote to the wheel, showed it the footage and spun it two million times. Black is exactly as likely as it was before anyone started counting.
A roulette wheel at the centre of a two-year study by the Institute for Probable Outcomes has shown no awareness that red came up seven times in a row on the evening of 14 March, despite repeated efforts by researchers to tell it.
The study was commissioned after the Institute received more than nine hundred letters from the public asking why black had not come up yet, when it was so clearly due.
Findings
- Across 2,000,000 spins, the chance of black after seven reds was the same as the chance of black after anything else.
- The wheel did not respond to footage of the seven reds, at normal speed or slowed down.
- A handwritten letter, placed on the wheel by a member of staff, fell off at the next spin.
- People standing next to the wheel were 84 percent more certain about black than people standing in the car park, a gap the authors put down to proximity.
We tried everything we could think of to make it remember. We are now fairly confident it has nothing to remember with.
Methodology
Spins were recorded on a single-zero wheel lent by a casino that asked not to be named, then repeated on a second wheel to rule out the possibility that the first was being stubborn. Every result was checked by two analysts and a man from the public gallery who insisted on watching. The Institute has sent its findings to everyone who wrote in. Most replied that black was now very due.
