The mystery

That experience made a deep and lasting impression on me. Like most experiences in life, you learn more from failures than from successes. Where had I gone wrong? Spades shouldn't have lost all those times in a row. A quick calculation told me that the chance of spades winning a race was one chance in four. Winning twice in a row would be one chance in four multiplied by four, sixteen. Winning three times in a row would be one chance in four times four times four, sixty-four. Winning four times in a row would be one chance in four times four times four times four, which equalled two hundred and fifty six.

I concluded that I must have just been very unlucky and had been hit by a two hundred and fifty six to one improbable situation. I then pondered on the chances of this streak of bad luck continuing. The chances of spades coming up five times in a row worked out at one thousand and twenty four to one against. Surely I'd be justified in offering odds of five hundred to one if I'd have continued the card racing game? The difference between getting four spade wins and five spade wins in a row were one thousand and twenty four minus two hundred and fifty six; surely that meant there was less chance of spades coming up than any other suit?

Yet, the mathematical theory told me that there was no great counter in the sky. Each new race started with each of the suits having an exactly equal chance, of one chance in four, of winning the race and it didn't matter that any particular suit had won a sequence of races before. As far as probability theory was concerned, the memory of any previous events was completely erased.

I didn't believe it. That night I sat up the whole night dealing out cards and running suit races. To my satisfaction, after hundreds of races had been run, the suits had each won an almost equal number of races. There had to be some great counter in the sky, exercising an influential force to slow the winners down and speed the losers up. Yet, logic and the mathematics told me that there was no mechanism for memory in place: each race started with the same odds for each suit winning, whatever sequence of events had gone before. It was very perplexing indeed.