Begging the Question: The Nonindependence Error in fMRI Data Analysis

You sit with a deck of fifty-two cards in front of you, face down. You flip the first card: a 10 of diamonds. What are the odds of that? One out of fifty-two. Remarkable. You flip the next card: a queen of hearts. Unbelievable! The odds of this sequence were 1/52 * 1/51 (less than 1 in 2000). You continue flipping cards: a 4 of clubs follows, then an 8 of diamonds, then an 8 of hearts. Once you have flipped them all over you stare in disbelief; the particular sequence of cards you just observed happens one out of every 8*10 (52 factorial) times. Every person in the world could shuffle a deck of cards and flip through it every minute of their entire lives, and even then, the odds of the world seeing your particular sequence of cards will be less than 1/10! Extraordinary.

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