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What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

stat.berkeley.edu

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Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#71

Post by nine_k »

GuB-42 wrote: post #38

I think getting killed by a meteorite is in that order of magnitude. But it is a bit of a tricky question. Because you can get hit by a small space rock, it has already happened but it is extremely rare, much less than 1 in a million, and I don't know if there is a record of anyone dying from it. But there is also a small chance of a massive impact killing billions in our lifetime, and intermediate scale events like…

There are records of people killed by meteorites, literally in single digits.

A simple statistical test would give you an idea. With 10B people on Earth, a "one in a million per lifetime chance" would happen to 10M people during their lifetimes. If we optimistically assume that a lifetime is 100 years, and the chances do not change with age, the event would affect 100k people every year.

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#72

Post by [deleted] »

GuB-42 wrote: post #38

I think getting killed by a meteorite is in that order of magnitude. But it is a bit of a tricky question. Because you can get hit by a small space rock, it has already happened but it is extremely rare, much less than 1 in a million, and I don't know if there is a record of anyone dying from it. But there is also a small chance of a massive impact killing billions in our lifetime, and intermediate scale events like…

[deleted]

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#73

Post by quickthrower2 »

Recursing wrote: post #50

Reminds me of https://markxu.com/strong-evidence «One time, someone asked me what my name was. I said, “Mark Xu.” Afterward, they probably believed my name was “Mark Xu.” I’m guessing they would have happily accepted a bet at 20:1 odds that my driver’s license would say “Mark Xu” on it. The prior odds that someone’s name is “Mark Xu” are generously 1:1,000,000. Posterior odds of 20:1 implies that the odds ratio of me…

Why is the 20 multiplied by the million? Why not 0.95 multiplied by million?

Using the same argument I would accept infinite odds that my username is quickthrower2 so there is infinite information?

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#74

Post by ithkuil »

nabla9 wrote: post #44

"Not in a million years"–something that might happen once in a million years for an individual–happens over 8000 times per year for people on earth. Many of them have smartphones with camera to record the event. That's why we have an actual video where quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

My chance of dying because of a dinosaur-estinction-event-class asteroid hit is one in a 65 million years, thus every two and a half days on average a random person on earth dies being hit by an asteroid of that size.

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#76

Post by JBiserkov »

esrauch wrote: post #66
Sebb767 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To save some time for the rest of us: > If we guess a President will serve on average about 6 years, then [1 in (6 times 4.0 million =) 24 million] babies will someday be President.

I prefer the interpretation of an ominous prediction that the presidency will be filled by 24 million babies someday soon. Switzerland does have a committee of 7 people as president, only a small step from that to 24 million babies.

The intelligence of current generation of "AI" has been compared to a baby's, so... ;-)

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#77

Post by quickthrower2 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #57
Recursing wrote: post #50

Reminds me of https://markxu.com/strong-evidence «One time, someone asked me what my name was. I said, “Mark Xu.” Afterward, they probably believed my name was “Mark Xu.” I’m guessing they would have happily accepted a bet at 20:1 odds that my driver’s license would say “Mark Xu” on it. The prior odds that someone’s name is “Mark Xu” are generously 1:1,000,000. Posterior odds of 20:1 implies that the odds ratio of me…

Someone offering that bet though would also alter the odds though. Because why would someone offer such a ridiculous bet after you've told your name, unless they had special information about your name? Although it being a possible YouTube prank channel would make it also possible that you actually have a chance to win for the reactions.

I would put the odds of Mark Xu’s license having that name on it at about 15%. Because Mark is probably an anglicised asian name.

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#78

Post by adrianN »

nine_k wrote: post #69
Tainnor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, it's not actually uniform, or "random" - it only has to be indistinguishable from random, e.g. if you had access to a true random source and a pseudo-random one, it should be computationally infeasible to distinguish them.

Given a finite amount of sample.values, you can always find a polynomial to match the values. You can only proclaim that something is "truly random" on epistemological grounds, assuming that true randomness is somehow exposed by the universe. This holds under quantum physics, but not under classical mechanics. Unless there is some quantum effect, RNGs based on fluid dynamics, like lava lamps, may be completely determ…

Your polynomial has no predictive value in almost all cases.

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#79

Post by pavlov »

Recursing wrote: post #50

Reminds me of https://markxu.com/strong-evidence «One time, someone asked me what my name was. I said, “Mark Xu.” Afterward, they probably believed my name was “Mark Xu.” I’m guessing they would have happily accepted a bet at 20:1 odds that my driver’s license would say “Mark Xu” on it. The prior odds that someone’s name is “Mark Xu” are generously 1:1,000,000. Posterior odds of 20:1 implies that the odds ratio of me…

This article seems to twist the definition of “extraordinary” to something clearly not intended by the original quote about claims and evidence.

Mark is a very common first name. Xu is a Chinese surname shared by over ten million people (according to Wikipedia). It’s entirely ordinary that someone would have this combination of names.

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#80

Post by TomK32 »

Scarblac wrote: post #19

> "Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten." -- Terry Pratchett Making fun of the fact that if someone says "it's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!" in fiction, you know it's going to work. In _Guards! Guards!_ this is taken to the point that…

The cheese-loving aviators have the Swiss-cheese-model to visualize how small unimportant errors can stack up to a catastrophic outcome. Though in my opinion there's a flaw in this thinking as no sane cheese seller would shuffle their layers of cheese after cutting them: Hence 1-in-million chances happen all the time. https://www.aviationfile.com/swiss-cheese-model/
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