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Intelligent Design

Donn said:
My brain glazes-over when stats appear, but while reading your post I thought:
How many special numbers exist that we don't know about yet? They might also be appearing and going unnoticed because we don't know to notice.

That somehow makes the appearance of numbers we do notice a little suspect to me. I am probably making a mistake.
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We can only be surprised by the appearance of combinations that are already meaningful to us, and as long as they are a very small percentage of the total number of possible combinations.

For example if the digits of pi in base 8 appeared that would not be meaningful to us because we are only familiar with them in base 10.

If there were a lot more combinations that were meaningful to us the degree of surprise when one appeared would lessen. If 50% of possible combinations were meaningful there would be no surprise at all when one appeared.

Not sure if that will help. :)
 
Pixel42 said:
We can only be surprised by the appearance of combinations that are already meaningful to us, and as long as they are a very small percentage of the total number of possible combinations.

For example if the digits of pi in base 8 appeared that would not be meaningful to us because we are only familiar with them in base 10.

If there were a lot more combinations that were meaningful to us the degree of surprise when one appeared would lessen. If 50% of possible combinations were meaningful there would be no surprise at all when one appeared.

Not sure if that will help. :)
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Heh. A little.

I take away that significance/surprise is read into a situation. That it's actually very hard for us to resist the surrounding effects of significance: feelings, memories and story-telling; let-alone reason about it dispassionately.
 
Pixel42 said:
The only posters on this thread consistently demonstrating a lack of understanding of simple probability are you and Fudbucker.

Abaddon also demonstrated a lack of understanding but, unlike you and Fudbucker, he is willing to learn.
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Well, MikeG put his finger on it. I read the post to imply "sequences" and not "combinations". That was entirely my mistake. I am happy to own that error.

The silver lining for my mistake? Both you and MikeG not only pointed it out, but elaborated and illustrated it in terms that anyone could understand.

The cloud? I am an engineer, dammit. I should have spotted that faux-pas straight out of the box.
 
PartSkeptic said:
The lack of understanding of simple probability of some on this site is truly astounding. :eek:

I hope you guys like to bet, and are prepared to put your money where your mouth is. Fudbucker and I can take it off you suckers.

Darn, my conscience just told me that what I am proposing is unethical - it would be like taking candy from a baby.
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So reading my explanation in the post preceding yours, was it the maths you struggled with, or the English?
 
I'm actually mildly curious to know what kind of bet PartSkeptic thinks he could win with me, bearing in mind that I've never bought a lottery ticket because I consider them a tax on stupidity.
 
Pixel42 said:
I'm actually mildly curious to know what kind of bet PartSkeptic thinks he could win with me, bearing in mind that I've never bought a lottery ticket because I consider them a tax on stupidity.
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Lotteries & casinos are made possible by people who don't understand mathematics. In the US culture at least, the quickest way to tax the gullible is to hold a lottery.
 
Pixel42 said:
I'm actually mildly curious to know what kind of bet PartSkeptic thinks he could win with me, bearing in mind that I've never bought a lottery ticket because I consider them a tax on stupidity.
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I'll warrant that it involves cards or lottery draws, or somesuch.

If honesty could be relied on, we could simply get people here to toss a coin 10 times and report the results. It'd be amusing to ask PS or Fudbucker to guess how many would report 10 heads or 10 tails.
 
Pixel42 said:
I'm actually mildly curious to know what kind of bet PartSkeptic thinks he could win with me, bearing in mind that I've never bought a lottery ticket because I consider them a tax on stupidity.
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My guess is that he thinks that if you hold that every sequence of coin tosses is equally likely, he could just cheat and use a weighted coin and you'd never get to accuse him of cheating when it comes up tails every time.

I don't know if he really thinks that the possibility of trickery invalidates the concept of probability, or if he doesn't understand.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
My guess is that he thinks that if you hold that every sequence of coin tosses is equally likely, he could just cheat and use a weighted coin and you'd never get to accuse him of cheating when it comes up tails every time..........
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Careful. It is.
 
I know, but PS isn't looking logically, but intuitively. He doesn't care about the actual probability, he's saying that if something looks weird to him, it must be intentional.
 
Weird? You mean, like a gasket going on his water heater?
 
Pixel42 said:
I'm actually mildly curious to know what kind of bet PartSkeptic thinks he could win with me, bearing in mind that I've never bought a lottery ticket because I consider them a tax on stupidity.
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Ummm. When the jackpot gets foolishly large, we typically buy a ticket where everyone buys a line each. It isn't a regular thing, it is just an office lark.

That said, I am aware that there are a subset of people who religiously buy tickets for every draw in multiple lotteries day in and day out. It never works, ever. Each has there own strange system. use the same numbers all the time, use numbers that have been less frequently drawn, etc. None of that nonsense works.

I only once happened upon a system that actually did work. It was mathematically based and was utterly sound. I actually met the guy who came up with it, one Stefan Klincewicz.
 
MikeG said:
Weird? You mean, like a gasket going on his water heater?
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Yes. He's basically arguing that anything that makes him feel a certain way, anything that intuitively feels 'off', can't be random.
And that opens up the door for all kinds of magical thinking and seeing conscious agents where there are none.
 
Hang on a sec. He DOES understand:

PartSkeptic said:
........If one had to plot the probability of fifty tosses having 25 heads, 26 heads up to 50 heads, one would find the the 25 heads would be in the center of the plot, and the 50 heads being at the least probable end of the plot.......If you were ask to bet on the the number of heads one would chose a number between 23 and 27. If one got 50 heads, there would be a demand for the coin to be checked..........
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So why the snide comment when I showed the working for exactly this?
 
As an aside to an aside...

I recall an anecdote where a math professor would have his students try to simulate a random number sequence and put it on the blackboard with a truly random sequence. The assertion was that he could immediately spot the “real” random sequence.

Anyone else recall that?
 
abaddon said:
Ummm. When the jackpot gets foolishly large, we typically buy a ticket where everyone buys a line each. It isn't a regular thing, it is just an office lark.
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Obviously it's a better bet when the jackpot is large, because the cost/benefit ratio is more favourable, so if you're going to buy a ticket that's the week to do it. As long as it's just a bit of fun and you don't bet more than you can afford to lose there's no harm in it.

I do have some premium bonds, because there's no risk to my capital and I'll probably get the same interest (albeit in unpredictable prizes) as I would if I put the money in an ordinary interest account. The fact that there is a chance, however small, of doing much better is a bonus.

When the UK lottery started I picked my six numbers, and then checked the winning numbers every week to see if I would have won something. When the money I'd saved by not playing the lottery exceeded £100 I bought myself something nice for that amount. I'd done that a couple of times when I got bored with it and stopped checking the winning numbers.
 
MikeG said:
Hang on a sec. He DOES understand:
So why the snide comment when I showed the working for exactly this?
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If it's not a matter of understanding, it might be a matter of honesty. But I'd hate to imply something like that.
Hanlon's razor and all...
 
MikeG said:
Hang on a sec. He DOES understand:



So why the snide comment when I showed the working for exactly this?
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You know what the problem is?

That people here do not understand WHICH result is more improbable. or probable. Or likely.

How anyone can reverse the the two is beyond me!!! :eek: :boggled: :eye-poppi
 
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