Re: Martial law comes to New Orleans.

hal@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 21:24:56 -0400, "David L. Burkhead"
<dburkhuad@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

http://www.think.i12.com/fallacies.html

Very nice! You should weigh in on stuff more often.

Thanks.

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAA !!!!!!!!!

<wiping tears from eyes>

godDAMN I love it when the retards give each other reach-arounds.

So point out the errors of fact. The only parts that were the least bit
questionable were the speed of nerve impulse and the time it takes to
process visual information and I sourced both of those. Everything in the
bit used optimistic assumptions from the point of view of the person
"reacting."

But you can't point out the supposed errors because you can't even answer
simple questions about simple problems. You probably still think that the
more times you flip a fair coin the more likely you are to get exactly half
heads and half tails.*

As long as you start with basic fallacies like that, you will continue to be
wrong.

David L. Burkhead

*One more try to educate Hal in elementary probability. The two simplest
cases, laid out in the simplest possible form. If Hal doesn't "get it" this
time, there is truly no hope for him.

Two flips, four possible combinations

HH
HT
TH
TT

2 of the four outcomes are 1 head, one tail
50% of the outcomes are 1 head, one tail.

Four flips, 16 possible outcomes:

HHHH
HHHT
HHTH
HHTT*
HTHH
HTHT*
HTTH*
HTTT
THHH
THHT*
THTH*
THTT
TTHH*
TTHT
TTTH
TTTT

6 of the 16 outcomes are 2 head, 2 tail.
37.5% of the outcomes are 2 heads, 2 tails.

So in two flips, the odds of getting exactly half heads and half tails is
50% but in four flips the odds is 37.5%. The larger set--more flips--the
odds of getting exactly half head, half tails is _lower_. You could run the
same gedankanexperiment on the case of 6 flips (64 possible outcomes), 8
flips (256 possible outcomes), etc. and see that the trend continues. Much
beyond that and you really do need to use the binomial probability equation
to calculate the odds:

P(i)subN = N!/(i!*(N-1)!)*p^i*q^(N-i) (I've identified the terms several
times before both directly and through links so I don't do so again here.)

And once numbers get up somewhere in the couple of hundred, you need to
start using approximations such as Stirling's Formula even with a computer.
But all of them show that probability for the case i = N/2 is a
monotonically decreasing function of N.

One of Hal's basic assumptions about statistics is, pure and simply, wrong.

David L. Burkhead


.

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