The common and natural impression is in favor of D’Alembert: the regular series would be thought much more unlikely than an irregular. But this common impression is, I apprehend, merely grounded on the fact, that scarcely any body remembers to have ever seen one of these peculiar coincidences: the reason of which is simply that no one’s experience extends to any thing like the number of trials, within which that or any other given combination of events can be expected to happen. The chance of sixes on a single throw of two dice being ¹⁄₃₆, the chance of sixes ten times in succession is 1 divided by the tenth power of 36; in other words, such a concurrence is only likely to happen once in 3,656,158,440,062,976 trials, a number which no dice-player’s experience comes up to a millionth part of. But if, instead of sixes ten times, any other given succession of ten throws had been fixed upon, it would have been exactly as unlikely that in any individual’s experience that particular succession had ever occurred; although this does not seem equally improbable, because no one would be likely to have remembered whether it had occurred or not, and because the comparison is tacitly made, not between sixes ten times and any one particular series of throws, but between all regular and all irregular successions taken together.
That (as D’Alembert says) if the succession of sixes was actually thrown before our eyes, we should ascribe it not to chance, but to unfairness in the dice, is unquestionably true. But this arises from a totally different principle. We should then be considering, not the probability of the fact in itself, but the comparative probability with which, when it is known to have happened, it may be referred to one or to another cause. The regular series is not at all less likely than the irregular one to be brought about by chance, but it is much more likely than the irregular one to be produced by design; or by some general cause operating through the structure of the dice. It is the nature of casual combinations to produce a repetition of the same event, as often and no oftener than any other series of events. But it is the nature of general causes to reproduce, in the same circumstances, always the same event. Common sense and science alike dictate that, all other things being the same, we should rather attribute the effect to a cause which if real would be very likely to produce it, than to a cause which would be very unlikely to produce it. According to Laplace’s [pg 446] sixth theorem, which we demonstrated in a former chapter, the difference of probability arising from the superior efficacy of the constant cause, unfairness in the dice, would after a very few throws far outweigh any antecedent probability which there could be against its existence.
D’Alembert should have put the question in another manner. He should have supposed that we had ourselves previously tried the dice, and knew by ample experience that they were fair. Another person then tries them in our absence, and assures us that he threw sixes ten times in succession. Is the assertion credible or not? Here the effect to be accounted for is not the occurrence itself, but the fact of the witness’s asserting it. This may arise either from its having really happened, or from some other cause. What we have to estimate is the comparative probability of these two suppositions.
If the witness affirmed that he had thrown any other series of numbers, supposing him to be a person of veracity, and tolerable accuracy, and to profess that he took particular notice, we should believe him. But the ten sixes are exactly as likely to have been really thrown as the other series. If, therefore, this assertion is less credible than the other, the reason must be, not that it is less likely than the other to be made truly, but that it is more likely than the other to be made falsely.