Random Thoughts
Have just been reading (actually listening to) Leonard Mlodinow's book on randomness, The Drunkard's Walk. A highly enjoyable "everything you think you know is wrong" book which I heartily recommend. As is often the case, related things (randomly?) seem to happen- just as I was finishing the book, I noted a BBC article today about one the great "randomness" puzzles.
You can't beat a good monkey story. For those who don't click this BBC story involves the old saying that given an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters, the works of Shakespeare would be reproduced and some computer geek with a lot of time on his hands and the ability to spend $19 a day on computing time has set out to prove this (he has apparently set some protocols to make this project a little less infinite- the article explains an earlier 2003 effort where a simulation of billions of monkey years resulted in only half a line from Henry IV, Part II).
Some other key findings from the article:
- Practical experiments show monkeys have poor keyboard skills
"... in 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter "S" and had broken the keyboard."
- Monkeys are more interested in throwing faeces than writing sonnets.
I think getting to write articles like this makes life worth living for BBC writers.
posted by New England Guy @ 7:36 AM
2 Comments:
I remember running into the Monty Hall problem when I was in law school. I got it, but darned if I could not explain it to certain people no matter how hard I tried.
Here goes-Since Monty will always open a false choice, that fact that he opens a door is irrelevant- in fact a red herring. When Monty asks you to switch choices- he is giving you a 2/3ds chance of winning, since your original choice only had 1/3 chance.
i.e.- assume he doesn't open any doors. Its as if he asked now that you picked one door (with a 33% chance of winning)-would you like to switch that for these two doors (which combined have a 67% chance of winning). Since he's going to open an empty one no matter what, you need to ignore that fact.
I don't know if that helps anyone but thats the easiest way for me to grasp it. (My 15 year said it he understood when I explained it that way but he's at that age when he just says "yeah" to me a lot)
This was not the way Mlodinow
explained it in the book (he used the confusing (to me) 100 door example) but a way I worked out on my own(though I'm sure others have said the same thing)- in that I was inspired by a Richard Feynman (oops or was it Hawking?- damn audio books- its not easy to check) quote in the book- you will never understand any probability problem unless you do it yourself.
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