[Mr. Bird]

Because each "gamble" is independent of the other, the odds do not change. Every time you flip a coin, the chances are 50/50. If the condom failure rate is 3%, you have a 3% chance of failure with each use. There is no cumulative risk.

[DB]

If you take a 3% chance of getting an infection twice you have a 5.91% chance of the being infected when done.

You are confusing two different issues.

Each event is 3% regardless of how many consecutive successful chances you took previously BUT if you do the event 100 times you have an overall chance of 95.2% of being infected when you completed the 100 risk events.

[ex-Texan]

I agree with you. The odds are the same for every throw of the dice or for every lottery ticket you buy. That is why people who buy 20 + lottery tickets a week would be better off buying life more insurance or investing in mutual funds.

With AIDS so rampant in the gay community, and getting worse each day, if a person has stupid, reckless, promiscuous or drug addicted partners they have about a 100% chance of getting AIDS.

[MosesKnows]

There is no cumulative risk.

So many people encounter extreme difficulty in grasping the significance of this absolute.

[r9etb]

Because each "gamble" is independent of the other, the odds do not change. Every time you flip a coin, the chances are 50/50. If the condom failure rate is 3%, you have a 3% chance of failure with each use. There is no cumulative risk.

You're wrong.

Take the coin toss example.

For any given toss, the probability of getting "heads" on that toss is constant, at 0.5.

But we're not talking about individual coin tosses. We're talking about the probability of getting "heads" at least once during a series of coint tosses. Quite obviously the probability of getting at least one "heads" in 10 tosses is much greater than 0.5.

Poke here for a discussion of the topic.