Challenge #3 – The Devil’s Tail – Solution

This is the solution to Challenge #3 – The Devil’s Tail, make sure you check that post out before looking at the solution!

This Challenge is a modification of a famous problem which confused many people – The Boy-Girl paradox.

So, it turns out that “Heads” is the most probable at 67%. But why?

The devil could have any of the 3 combinations: {HT, TH, TT}, and 2 of those include a Heads! A common answer is “Equally Likely” as it is easy to assume that the devil showed us a specific coin, meaning the remaining coin is equally likely to be Heads or Tails, but this is not the case as we do not know which coin the devil showed us. Some people’s intuition may also have lead them to think it might be Tails as we have already had a Tails, but this is also not true. Hopefully this problem illustrates how probability is very deceptive and counter-intuitive!