Let's assume we get 225 million Americans up tomorrow morning and we
ask them all to wager a dollar. They go out in the morning at sunrise,
and they all call the flip of a coin. If they call correctly, they win
a dollar from those who called wrong. Each day the losers drop out,
and on the subsequent day the stakes build as all previous winnings
are put on the line.
After ten flips on ten mornings, there will be approximately 220,000
people in the United States who have correctly called ten flips in a
row. They each will have won a little over $1,000.
Now this group will probably start getting a little puffed up about
this, human nature being what it is. They may try to be modest, but at
cocktail parties they will occasionally admit to attractive members of
the opposite sex what their technique is, and what marvelous insights
they bring to the field of flipping.
[...] in another ten days we will have 215 people who have
successfully called their coin flips 20 times in a row and who, by
this exercise, each have turned one dollar into a little over $1
million. $225 million would have been lost, $225 million would have
been won.
By then, this group will really lose their heads. They will probably
write books on "How I Turned a Dollar into a Million in Twenty Days
Working Thirty Seconds a Morning." Worse yet, they'll probably start
jetting around the country attending seminars on efficient
coin-flipping and tackling skeptical professors with, "If it can't be
done, why are there 215 of us?"