Re: Religion VS Science




"DZ" <12926@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2448@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Seth Breidbart <sethb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Dr_Dickie <Dr_Dicke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Your hypothesis was that certain percentage of gun owners were
> >> criminal, and a certain percentage were not. Therefore, until the N
> >> = a level of significance, there is no support for or against.
> >
> > Let's try a similar thought experiment, without the religious terms.
> >
> > There are two urns. One has 2 white balls and 98 clear balls. The
> > other has 25 white balls, 25 black balls, and 50 clear balls. You
> > pick one of them, but don't know which. The hypothesis is "half the
> > colored (non-clear) balls in this urn are black" (equivalently, "this
> > is urn #2").
> >
> > To start with, the probability of the hypothesis is 50%. You pull one
> > ball randomly from the urn. It's white. What is the probability of
> > the hypothesis now? (It turns out to be 25/27.) That is, pulling a
> > _white_ ball greatly increases the chances that some of the balls in
> > the urn are black.
>
> Thank you! Using my notation from two posts up
> (http://groups.google.com/group/misc.fitness.weights/msg/2b18d78bcc4207f9)
>
> w0=1/2; p0=25/100; q0=2/100
>
> and the probability of the hypothesis with this first observation
> becomes
>
> w1 = w0*p0 / (w0*p0 + (1 - w0)*q0) = 25/27
>
> We don't even need to worry about what w0 value is to show that w1 is
> greater than w0 here, or equivalently that the odds in favor of the
> hypothesis ("there are some black balls in the urn we took a ball
> from") increase with the observation of a white ball.

I guess I must be speaking a different language. I understand that (I really
do, I am not just saying that--I am sure that I do not understand it to the
level of a statistician, but I do understand that the probability changes).
I understand that the odds increase in favor of the hypothesis, my point has
always been about drawing conclusions before sufficient testing.
Let me put it this way: Once 85 of the balls have been tested, will the
probability continue to change significantly with each draw?
--
Dr. Dickie
Skepticult member in good standing #394-00596-438
Poking kooks with a pointy stick.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' ('I found it!'), but rather 'hmm....that's funny...'"
- Isaac Asimov


.

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