From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Thu Oct 28 1999 - 22:43:47 MDT
Clint O'Dell <clintodell@hotmail.com> Wrote:
>Probability is what actualy happens, what we actualy observe and
>statistics is what's supposedly probable in pure mathematics.
No, probability is a measure of confidence on the accuracy of our prediction,
it has to do with us not what we're guessing about, quantum mechanical
considerations excluded of course.
> Take the lottery for example. Statisticaly any combination is just as
> likely as any other combintation. But when you enter all those drawings in
> a database and do a comparison you notice that is not the case. 1 2 3 4 5 6
> does not occur nor any sequence of 6, by 1s, 2s, or what ever. Why not?
Because for cultural reasons there are only a few dozen or a most a few hundred
combinations that humans like and consider significant (123456, 654321,
666666 etc) and many millions that they don't. On a large golf course I paint
just a hundred blades of grass red and then drive a golf ball, the ball will almost
certainly come to rest on a green blade of grass not red.
> So with coin flipping I compare the probability 50/50 based on the
>amount of flips I've already done and compare that to the statistical
>value of the possibility of it comming up heads that many times.
The coin has no way of knowing if it came up heads or tails before,
it's always 50/50. I just flipped a true coin 999,999 times and it came
up heads every time, what are the probability of that happening?
Answer, 100%, it just happened, I just saw it, my confidence that
it happened it total, 100%. Probability is about the future not the past.
The probability that the next flip is heads is 50/50 (In the real world
I'd suspect it was a two headed coin but that's another matter)
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:38 MST