by Steve Maas
A coin flip lands heads three times in a row. What are the odds that it will be heads on the next toss?
A rational decision-maker knows that they are 50-50. But it’s easy to succumb to the belief that streaks don’t occur by chance. This common misperception is known as the gambler’s fallacy. In “Decision-Making under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence from Asylum Judges, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires,” Daniel Chen, Tobias J. Moskowitz and Kelly Shue found that in a number of different settings, individuals have a slight bias against deciding the same way in successive cases.
The researchers found, for example, that the odds that a judge rejects an asylum seeker are 3.3 percentage points higher if the judge has approved the previous case, all else being equal. They also noted that the likelihood that judges are influenced by a prior decision increases with the length of the sequence of positive or negative rulings and the similarity of the previous cases.
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Question
Use the passage to answer the question.
How does the rhetorical question in the opening paragraph advance the author’s purpose?
(1 point)
Responses
The question emphasizes a specific word the author wants the readers to notice.
The question emphasizes a specific word the author wants the readers to notice.
The author emphasizes the question they hope to answer over the course of the text.
The author emphasizes the question they hope to answer over the course of the text.
The question gets the reader invested in the author’s topic.
The question gets the reader invested in the author’s topic.
The author wants to introduce two opposing ideas for the reader to consider.
1 answer
The correct response is:
The question gets the reader invested in the author’s topic.
This is because the rhetorical question about the odds of a coin toss after a streak of heads engages the reader's curiosity and encourages them to think about the implications of the gambler's fallacy in decision-making, setting the stage for the subsequent information presented in the passage.
