this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
52 points (96.4% liked)
Science Memes
17496 readers
3056 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Having two possible outcomes does not mean it's a 50:50 chance.
"So if I aim the arrow at the 1cm square from 100m away and shoot, I either hit it or I don't. So basically I have a 50% chance of hitting it."
My wife, father-in-law and I were playing a board game with my brother-in-law. In this game, we were playing as detectives who have to try to find his character, but each turn he could move in secret in one of several directions. We were a few turns in at one point and he could have been in any of dozens of places at this point. We drove him nuts by saying "he's either in this spot or he's not, it's a 50-50 chance." He kept arguing "I could be in a ton of places! It's not a 50-50 chance!" But we just kept pretending we didn't understand and arguing that there were only two possibilities, he's there or he's not, so it was clearly a 50-50 chance. He got quite angry.
Scotland Yard or Letters from Whitechapel?
I love Scotland Yard. We got it for a friend who loves detective stories. Then discovered that it’s a public transit simulator which is even better.
Honestly, Letters From Whitechapel is a better design of the same concept.
For detective story games, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is amazing.
And for public transit games, Bus is the way to go (probably)
On the other hand: Half of my lottery tickets were jackpots. I never played and have (1/2 * 0 = ) 0 jackpots.
The thing with that is that it's actually a useful generalization to make in a lot of scenarios.
If you know nothing about the distinction between two possible outcomes, treating them as equally likely is a helpful tool to continue with the back of the envelope guess. Knowing this path needs 5 coin tosses to go right and this one needs 10 is helpful to approximate which is better.
Your example is obviously outside the realm where you have zero information, so uniform distribution is no longer the reasonable default. But the idea is from a reasonable technique, taken to extremes by someone who doesn't fully get it.
Very weird fun fact about arrows/darts and statistics, theres 0% chance of hitting an exact bullseye. You can hit it its possible to throw a perfect bullseye. It just has a probability of zero when mathematically analyzed due to being an infinitesimally small point. Sound like I'm making shit up? Here's the sauce
How can an outcome both be entirely possible and have 0% probability?
Q.E.D
Key word here is "infinitesimally." Of course if you're calculating the odds of hitting something infinitesimally small you're going to get 0. That's just the nature of infinities. It is impossible to hit an infinitesimally small point, but that's not what a human considers to be a "perfect bullseye." There's no paradox here.
Another lesson I the importance of significant digits, a concept I've had to remind many a young (and sometimes an old) engineer about. An interesting idea along similar lines is that 2 + 2 can equal 5 for significantly large values of 2.
What do you mean by significantly large
Depending on how you're rounding, I assume. Standard rounding to whole digits states that 2.4 will round to 2 but 4.8 will round to 5. So 2.4+2.4=4.8 can be reasonably simplified to 2+2=5.
This is part of why it's important to know what your significant digits are, because in this case the tenths digit is a bit load bearing. But, as an example, 2.43 the 3 in the hundredths digit has no bearing on our result and can be rounded or truncated.
Oh. That's what they mean. That's dumb lol.
Also the circumference of the dart tip is not infinitesimally small, so theres a definite chance of it overlapping the 'perfect bullseye' by hitting any number of nearby points.