§ 15. If the reader will study the following example, one well known to mathematicians under the name of the Petersburg[1] problem, he will find that it serves to illustrate several of the considerations mentioned in this chapter. It serves especially to bring out the facts that the series with which we are concerned must be regarded as indefinitely extensive in point of number or duration; and that when so regarded certain series, but certain series only (the one in question being a case in point), take advantage of the indefinite range to keep on producing individuals in it whose deviation from the previous average has no finite limit whatever. When rightly viewed it is a very simple problem, but it has given rise, at one time or another, to a good deal of confusion and perplexity.
The problem may be stated thus:—a penny is tossed up; if it gives head I receive one pound; if heads twice running two pounds; if heads three times running four pounds, and so on; the amount to be received doubling every time that a fresh head succeeds. That is, I am to go on as long as it continues to give a succession of heads, to regard this succession as a ‘turn’ or set, and then take another turn, and so on; and for each such turn I am to receive a payment; the occurrence of tail being understood to yield nothing, in fact being omitted from our consideration. However many times head may be given in succession, the number of pounds I may claim is found by raising two to a power one less
- ↑ So called from its first mathematical treatment appearing in the Commentarii of the Petersburg Academy; a variety of notices upon it will be found in Mr Todhunter’s History of the Theory of Probability.
