(January 24, 2016 at 10:39 am)robvalue Wrote: No, the coin bit was where one team had to pick three outcomes of three coin flips, like HHH and then he allocated the other team another list, THH. He then made people cheer on the second team, to make it seem like that helps them win. But it's actually just very simple probability. (What he forgot to mention at the start is that you reset after each "match".)
He wrote in his book that he has a way to beat roulette and he will validate it "when he finds a mathematician". This is real ignorance of how numbers and probability work. Unless he actually wanted to present himself that way.
Like I said before, I highly doubt he's an idiot when it comes to these things. It's more likely that he's actively trying to trick people (because, y'know, he's a magician) and most people would fall for such explanations.
The same thing applies with his "wisdom of crowds" explanation. He doesn't believe that's how he did it, because doing it that way obviously wouldn't work, and the actual trick was the special effects. However that explanation might convince a load of people, or he may have hoped it would. To his credit, at the end of the show he did put out another explanation, which was that he rigged the lottery machine. Neither of course were true, but then he's not supposed to reveal his tricks anyway, he's a magician.
I think the same thing applies to his roulette comment. It's tongue in cheek, it's supposed to be funny. Incidentally, he did "almost" beat a roulette machine by predicting which number the ball would land on, but ultimately lost when it landed on the number next to it.
If you think he's an idiot, he's probably got you fooled, because that's exactly what he wants you to think at times. If he revealed how he actually did his tricks, he wouldn't be special anymore.
