From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Aug 20 2001 - 17:26:24 MDT
On Saturday, August 18, 2001 12:45 PM Terry W. Colvin
[mailto:fortean1@mindspring.com] forwarded:
>>How many of you know that Newton reasoned that the
>>probability of flipping two coins and coming up with two heads is 1/3
>
>He has lots of modern company. This is essentially the same error made by
>those who lambasted Marilyn vos Savant over her "Let's Make a Deal" puzzle.
>Some of those were mathematicians, who should know better.
No, it is not at all the same. In fact, I doubt if Newton ever made such an
error; in the absence of a good source for the claim, it is more plausible
that this is just another amusing but false fable aimed at showing that
"geniuses can be just as dumb as you and I". Newton was born 20 years after
Pascal, and died more than 50 years after Pascal. He could not possibly
have been unaware of Pascal's work, including the first combinatorial steps
toward a proper theory of probability, and he was no slouch at combinatorics
himself.
As for "those who lambasted Marilyn vos Savant", she deserved it. In that
case (as opposed to the unlikely Newton error), there are multiple mental
models of the problem that one can form, which lead to different conditional
probabilities. It is pointless to ask which is correct (that question is
meaningless unless we first adopt some criterion for resolving the
ambiguity). The interesting questions concern the ambiguity itself -- what
does it teach us about the hazards (and the entertainment value) of
formulating mathematical statements in natural language? There is a word
for people who have no significant math training, but claim to have solved
hard problems (she also took a stab at the Fermat Problem as I recall), and
then get their knickers in a twist when their errors are pointed out by
people who do have math training. They are called cranks. Being "the
world's smartest woman" doesn't make her immune.
< http://www.wiskit.com/marilyn/marilyn.html >
john k
---------------
Personally I think ‘odds’ are an imaginary concept invented to promote
gambling, like thanksgiving was invented to promote retail sales
Would it be okay to clip posts to make smaller replies
Still lost
steve
---------------
>Personally I think ‘odds’ are an imaginary concept invented to promote
>gambling, like thanksgiving was invented to promote retail sales
Well, probability theory (or some of its applications anyway) does have
fortean aspects I admit. For instance, the frequency interpretation of
probability is invariably introduced by considering successive flips of a
coin, and we are expected to believe that the probability of heads is 1/2 if
the coin is "unbiased". But what is an unbiased coin? Surely it can only
be a coin for which the probability of heads is 1/2.
>Would it be okay to clip posts to make smaller replies
Eh? If I had clipped any more there wouldn't have been any quoted material
at all, and the reader would have been left to puzzle out what was being
referred to. Or are you asking if it's OK for *you* to clip posts? By all
means go ahead, you have my blessing. ;-)
john k
-----------------
>If you overlook the pesky fact that those who wrote in to lambaste Marilyn
>had the very same "mental model" of the problem that she did but still got
>it wrong.
Gotta quibble with you here, snopes. Certainly some of her critics were as
clueless as she was. But the original poster was implying that (1) vos
Savant was correct, which is simply false; and (2) the mathematicians who
criticized her did so groundlessly, which is also false.
Someone who asserts that Andrew Wiles's solution of the Fermat problem is
incorrect because he didn't use Euclidean geometry (!), and then refuses to
accept persuasive information to the contrary, is a crank in my book.
john k
----------------
For the record I am concerned with offending someone by reposting/altering
their material, thanks for allowing me some latitude in trying to not be
repetitious boring
Is there a grammatical tool for this, the best I come up with is
‘personally…sales’ steve or should I just include the whole post in the
reply
The statistics + something [forgot what it was] course I took in school left
me with the opinion it is 1in 2, yes or no, on or off, and correlation of
random data is a risky business at best fraudulently misleading most of the
time such as in the case of surveys and censuses
Still lost
steve
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
Alternate: < terry_colvin@hotmail.com >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage *
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------------
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