hello, is this nate silver?

You may want to brush up on the wonderful Persi Diaconis.

They might wind up believing that there's no such thing as a fair game. 😂🤣

My youngest son won every flip for 2 1/2 years.

Why, thy mother favored thy older son?

next up: the monty hall problem

Now I want to go re-watch The Wire (because of Pryzbylewski teaching his students probability to get them into math).

My nephew is 6 and niece 4 and I've been trying on them we will play a game you both agree on and my verdict of this trial is that it makes them both hate me. Might try your method next time.

aw man. at various times, moving cross-country in my 20's early 30's and needing to reduce belongings to a carry-on suitcase, I left SO many material objects behind. Like that metal Singer Sewing machine from my grandma, and the chef's knife, and that textbook about Probability. which I loved.

Teach them backgammon at the same time. What are the odds of a particular number being rolled?

Once when I was little I was SO upset because I lost a game of Candyland against my dad. Instead of consoling me, my dad taught me about probability (and how to flip a coin). Maybe some consolation along with the lesson would have been helpful, but it certainly stuck with me in the long run.

www.smbc-comics.com/comic/number...

That's all well and good until one of your kids rolls a nat 20.

Understanding probability and statistics can help make you a more informed person. Causality etc.

The American way is to keep them ignorant of probabilities and yet still adjudicate with coin flips and dice. Or fancier scams like prop betting and the electoral college.

..or you could teach them debating skills. If more parents in the US did that then it might not be in the mess it's in?

Strong argument to be made that debating skills are how the US got into this mess. Namely that a lot of dudes think debates are about “winning” not finding the correct answer. And somehow not realizing that scholastic debate questions are always open ended, unlike real world questions.

hey any way to get kids to listen is to turn it into some kind of game.

(this is an actual thing i am doing. at this point they will request a coin flip when they are arguing over something)

I just had a sign that said; leave now while you still know it all……

Just wait until they start lecturing you on game theory in a few years 😂

I learned a bunch about this stuff from Khan academy (in 2019). High school made me deal with (and learn to avoid) critical thinking w/ numerals instead (2001). Student interests should matter to some degree, yarr? But, 2000 me disliked sports while now-me salivates a bit. So who knows

Getting the gambler’s fallacy into their heads will be a key step in their intellectual growth. You’re doing the lord’s work.

Tell them the winner gets to assemble your suit look for the next day.

this feels like a looming Bean Dad scenario

game theory

There was a time I did a college course on that. Something for lotto ticket purchase.

smart!

I used blackjack with my daughters to teach them addition when they were very little, then as strategy as they got older.

Mine go for paper-rock-scissors when a coin flip would be way more appropriate.

Yes! Prepare your kids to be ttrpg players! The hobby must grow!

Haha - mine hate it when we do coin flips. They’re starting to think they see patterns in who wins.😜

as a statistician, I deeply appreciate you taking this proactive step

Naming my kids with names that start with H and T has been a boon in this regard.

If you had a third kid, you'd have to rename the first two so that you had R, P, and S.

little Split Sample A, we call him

that’s why i named mine Abe and Lincoln Memorial (Memo for short)

Daddy Dent

I have been settling arguments with dice ever since my daughter got her first d20

If they nat 20, do they get to ground the other one?

Making your kids do TTRPG skills checks is a BRILLIANT idea.

"As one judge said to another, 'Be just, and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.'"

Lately, ours have been doing rock paper scissors, and it's been working well. So far it also works to gameify bedtime routine. "Whoever wins rock paper scissors has to put on PJs first"

i assume the lesson about loaded dice will be skipped.

also comes in handy when you get the inevitable “who do you love more?”

Whenever a kid does something noteworthy I tell them they're "tied for my favorite kid"

I have the reverse -- I offer a coin flip and they will often come to a resolution because neither wants a 50% chance of losing

My kids accept a coin flip till it doesn't go their way. Then they claim a coin flip isnt random and rage against the unfairness of clockwork universe deterministically set up from the dawn of time to ensure they don't get to choose their slice of cake first.

I recognize I have no free will, but I'm pretty sure the Big Bang would not have assigned me the smaller piece of cake.

(I also get cries of the coin flip wasn't fair, my sibling always wins when we do flip)

Currently setting up a single-particle double slit experiment to convince the kids that the universe is inherently random. Seems like a lot of work, but it's easier than calming down a mad 5 year old.

50% of the time, it works every time

you're raising Coin Boys www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/c...

Yeah I quickly had to stop doing “pick a number 1 to 10” when they figured out that first one to yell out 5 was the optimal strategy.

I mean 6 is a perfectly optimal response This is just heads tails with a learning curve

My parents would not have survived my brother’s and my adolescent years without Ro Sham Bo.

Don't teach them probability the way my grandfather taught me by using trick dice

Only request a coin flip when you're losing the argument.

The smartest one will start requesting the coin-flip only when wrong in the argument, and eventually all of them will; it's at that point you can be sure they have a basic grasp of probability! (Obviously there's not ALWAYS a clear right/wrong in an argument, of course.)

Good on you! Just take care to really hit on the *independence* of each flip; don’t wanna see (‘natural’) biases like the gambler’s fallacy or the hot-hand phenomena creep into their new appreciation of odds 🤓

Need to graduate to the prisoner’s dilemma after this.

I bet you could work rolling dice into these lessons pretty nicely. Kids will be running Vegas in 20 years

Pavlov's coin flip?

What I am most shocked by is the news that siblings bicker and fight! And here, I thought siblings existed in perfect harmony. 🤥

So just like the 9th Circuit.

Sounds just like the story my brother (a behavioral economist) starts his forthcoming book with, about the mechanisms he uses to fairly allocate dessert amongst my nephew and nieces! Let me shamelessly plug: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/judd-...

I exert an interesting effect on probability outcomes: given a 50/50 proposition, I will choose incorrectly 100% of the time

It’s been said that 5% is the conventional significance line because 5-6 heads/tails in a row is where people start feeling suspicious about the coin’s integrity. I am guessing that with kids it’s lowered to 2-3.

Diversion tactic, not bad.

Don't forget the winner of argument games: Rock Paper Scissors!!!

This is at least as good as AI literacy

Or don't teach them probability so you can have an advantage in picking numbers when rolling 2 dice.

Eenie meanie miney mo? Or bubble gum bubble gum in a dish? Although those can be gamed :-/

If you really want to really want to teach them about life, say “give me a coin for a moment so we can decide this,” then pocket the coin and walk away. 😢

You need a 20 sided die. Like a DnD one

This just brought back a crystal clear memory of my dad doing this exact same thing when I was little. I didn’t even realize why until just this moment.

Reverse auctions also work quite well imho

teaching my kids calculus so they can take the derivative of the coin flip or something idk

Get a pair of 10-sided dice at your local game store. Then you can even teach them percents.

Oh my kids hate that. They insist I play favorites, always forgetting that my favorite is Me, and me winning all the time is also something they hate

Good idea. Also INTO THE UNCUT GRASS for thoughts on conflict resolution

let me know when you get to the Monty Hall problem

High school probability/statistics teacher here: my students LOVE casino* Fridays; we play black-jack, roulette, craps, poker. We throw down!** *fake money **focus on fun and calculating probabilities

Wait until they learn about Bernoulli distributions

We discuss the value of flipping a coin extensively in our book! (Also, auctions) www.amazon.com/Game-Theoris...

We used dice to decide who did the dishes for years. I think it helped them learn probability.

This is a proven strategy. When they evolve and adapt, you drop Wittgensteinian truth tables on them, and that gets you through late middle school.

I'm a full grown adult and if I can't decide between two things I'll flip a coin. It's a useful life skill 😄

Same! And if I'm upset with the result then I've discovered which option I really preferred. Either way you win.

You have the right answer!! You flip a coin, then examine your instant reaction to the result. You don't follow the coin, you will know (disappointed or happy) what you really want to do.

Level up and only use only yu-gi-oh cards.

To determine nightly shower order, I would pick a number between 1 and 20, then the three kids would each make a guess. Closest guess chooses their slot.

The kids are gonna be at school like

Isn’t it fun how many times you have to reiterate the idea that every coin toss is a 50/50 probability, when one kid is disappointed in the outcome? It’s definitely the best way to settle an argument; I’ve just been surprised by how MANY times I’ve had to explain basic probability.

what i do is before i even flip i ask each of them if it is fair and get a verbal agreement to that effect

But do they think dice rolls are cumulative and argue about who has the “good dice” because every tabletop game ever…

That’s a great idea! I’ll try that next time.

I'm teaching my grandkids to tell the truth, encourage others, and be kind to everyone.

i love this — and as an added bonus, you can always fall back on the bible and claim divine will to justify the outcome to whichever child is upset: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleroma...

@nhoskee.bsky.social your kids will be arguing through graphs in few years I’m sure