Probability - How does it work?!

Knobheads.

saggy nuts

At last something comprehensible in this thread agaisnt all odds
We can always count on you balki
(BTW did you find the missing meme thread?)

Yeah, but only because someone posted in it and it appeared on the spy. I cannot see it in the search, or todays posts or anything. Its hiding from me.

Did you see my Golden Girls meme?? It was fucking GOOD!

Didn't see your GG meme post Balki, can't find the damn thread! rly

Sharing the winnings with all the other clever clogs who picked 1-6 would be a bit annoying though? ;)

Last year the Finnish national lottery published statistics of what kind of row people are likely to pick.
And 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 was indeed the most popular combination.
Thus the expected value for the sum winned is lowest for those numbers, cause there be most people to share the loot.

What's happening there is called the hipster obscurity paradox; everybody trying to be different ends up being different in the same manner. Chances are that if something just crosses your mind, it crosses million other people's minds also, unless your an einstein. Chances are you're not an einstein.

Totally random numbers get the highest expected value from the Lotto, cause the other hipsters that decide to get totatally random number numbers get different random numbers.

This should be of course extended outside the realm of lottery; music, clothes, facial hair, mode of transportation, etc should be chosen in random to maximize the obscurity of your lifestyle.

BTW, and of course completely needless to say, the word for the singular of the multi-sided object used to generate random sequences is a 'die'. 'Dice' is the plural.

yes, thanks for that contribution Oliver, have a pedantic day wont you. :]

YouTube - Black Sabbath - Never Say Die [TOTP]

Knobheads.

Tossers, surely?

Didn't see your GG meme post Balki, can't find the damn thread! rly

Its got the old duck on it and the caption is "Dont you wish your girlfriend was hot like Bea"

Hhjahaaaaaaaaahaha

I think we're getting hung up on how likely the combination of 100 heads out of 100 tosses is vs how likely the permutation of 100 consecutive heads is.

So good.

5 people who know each other a little, but not really well, wonder what the chances of two of them sharing a birthday might be. Anyone?

The birthday paradox is very interesting.

The chances of two random people sharing the same birthday are not the same as two people out of a pool of five sharing the same birthday. It's a bit of a head fuck at first but once you get your head around it, it makes sense. Probability is a fascinating subject.

http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-birthday-paradox/

This should be of course extended outside the realm of lottery; music, clothes, facial hair, mode of transportation, etc should be chosen in random to maximize the obscurity of your lifestyle.

unicycles naked to the post office for lucky dip

Hipster!

The birthday paradox is very interesting.

It can also be used to attack cryptosystems. It makes finding hash collisions much easier than you would intuitively expect.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_attack on wikipaedo

I love a bit of cryptography. Another fascinating subject. Even if most of the mathematics is a bit over my head. You read this?
Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms and Source Code in C: Amazon.co.uk: Bruce Schneier: Books

Not that one, but it is one of the definitive works (his CRYPTO-GRAM email newsletter is quite good, but if you know his book you probably know about that).

I had a book which I bought in China about maths as applied to cryptosystems. It was quite good, although I was struggling about 10% of the way in. One to keep going back to, if only I could remember who I lent it to.

Knobheads.

saggy nuts

Did you see my Golden Girls meme?? It was fucking GOOD!

Moronic hipster

I love a bit of cryptography. Another fascinating subject. Even if most of the mathematics is a bit over my head. You read this?
Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms and Source Code in C: Amazon.co.uk: Bruce Schneier: Books

I've been meaning to read that for awhile now. Might have to buy it now that you mention it.

There is a really good book on the history of Turing and the Polish mathmeticians efforts to crack Enigma by Khan which is worth a read for anyone into Cryptography. It's mostly descriptive so you don't need advanced maths to read it

its relative..

the probability on a single coin toss is always 50/50
but the probability on a group of coin tosses is historic.

It relative to where you stand
if you care about the outcome of all the results then the probability is determined by the previous results but if you're interested in the outcome of the next toss, then the probability is back to 50/50 determined by physics.

Moronic hipster

it was really very good.

Ta

BTW, and of course completely needless to say, the word for the singular of the multi-sided object used to generate random sequences is a 'die'. 'Dice' is the plural.

but hey don't let that stop you

The birthday paradox is very interesting.

The chances of two random people sharing the same birthday are not the same as two people out of a pool of five sharing the same birthday. It's a bit of a head fuck at first but once you get your head around it, it makes sense.

paradox is a massive misnoma in this case though! can't say i appreciate the headfuck aspect either tbh. clearly the former is 1/365 ignoring leap years, but the bigger the population in the latter case the more likely two people will share a birthday. i think even a mathematical shitwit would recognise that among 300 random people it is highly unlikely they all have different bdays

i think even a mathematical shitwit would recognise that among 300 random people it is highly unlikely they all have different bdays

Well yes, but the "paradox" (not really a paradox - just a counter-intuitive fact) is that there is a >50% chance of two people sharing a birthday in a random sample of just 23.

It makes sense when you think about it a bit, but it's a surprise to the uninitiated.