171–180 of 199 posts
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TFA: "If you tossed the coins [20 tails in a row] then the first answer would be NO, unless I'm very confident you lack the ability to fool me … "
Yeah, what does this even mean? Isn't coin flipping a random process?
https://www.npr.org/2004/02/24/1697475/the-not-so-random-coi...
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TFA: "If you tossed the coins [20 tails in a row] then the first answer would be NO, unless I'm very confident you lack the ability to fool me … "
Yeah, what does this even mean? Isn't coin flipping a random process?
> "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…
"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.
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Definitely not this. That wouldn't be random at all. For example, after picking 999,999 numbers you would be able to predict the next number with certainty. What it means is that every time you select a number, every number in the range has an equal probability of being selected.
Which means that there must be more state in the generator than is output as a random number; otherwise each time number X was produced then number Y would follow it. (Perhaps obvious, but I like stating the obvious.)
And apparently a man is about equally likely to die from breast cancer as he is from testicular cancer: both have a lifetime chance of about 1 in 5000.
[1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/testicular-cancer/about/...
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Yeah, what does this even mean? Isn't coin flipping a random process?
Anecdotally, with practice, some people can flip a coin to a desired outcome like 65% of the time. And .65^20 is only around 1 in 10,000.
With a bit of training you can feel the coin with your thumb when catching it to make sure you present the desired side. If you do it quickly enough people won't see you do it. The trick requires coins that have sides that feel distinctive.
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A log-odds of b bits means an odds of 2^b : 1 which means a probability of p = 2^b / (2^b + 1). In the original comment, the evidence update was stated as going from 20:1 to 1:1000000 and it was claimed this was approximately 24 bits of evidence. The update is from 2^4.3:1 to 2^-19.9:1. Subtracting the exponents you get 4.3 - -19.9 = 24.2 which is approximately 24 as claimed. The "20" in 20:1 is correctly accounted f…
Yes, you are doing math with odds as though they are fractions or ratios, which is deeply incorrect. 20:1 is not the reciprocal of 1:20 but the complement. Odds ratios and similar calculations do not work like this. You can do this type of calculation using X:1 odds or 1:X odds but not both in the same calculation. Or perhaps you can provide a reference to a justification of this type of calculation?
I think you're just wrong about needing everything to be in the form X:1 or 1:X. When I compute the ratio of 1000000:1 divided by 1:20 it gives 1000000:(1/20) then scaling both sides by the same factor gives 20000000:1.
Struck by a Meteorite: The odds of a person being struck by a meteorite are estimated to be about one in 1.6 million.
I wonder how plausible things like this seem to people…