On Tuesday, June 16, 2015 at 4:48:36 PM UTC-7, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote: > Ned Batchelder wrote: > > > On Tuesday, June 16, 2015 at 6:01:06 PM UTC-4, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn > > wrote: > >> Your programmatic "proof", as all the other intuitive-empirical "proofs", > >> and all the other counter-arguments posted before in this thread, is > >> flawed. As others have pointed out at the beginning of this thread, you > >> *cannot* measure or calculate probability or determine randomness > >> programmatically (at least not with this program). > > > > You *can* estimate probability with a program, which is what is happening > > here. > > No. Just no. > > >> I repeat: Probability is what relative > >> frequency (which you can measure) *approaches* for *large* numbers. 100 > >> is anything but large, to begin with. > > > > The number of trials in this program is not 100, it is 1 million. You > > seem uninterested in trying to understand. > > It still would _not_ a measure or a calculation of *probability*. So much > for "uninterested in trying to understand". > > >> What is "large" depends on the experiment, not on the experimentator. > >> And with independent events, the probability for getting zero does not > >> increase because you have been getting non-zeros before. It simply does > >> not work this way. > > > > Again, if you look at the code, you'll see that we are not talking about > > the probability of getting a zero on the next roll. We are talking about > > the probability of getting no zeros in an N-roll sequence. I have no idea > > how you have misunderstood this for so long. > > You do not understand that it boils down to the same problem.
Actually, no, they're not. They're entirely different problems. "What are the odds of getting 8 zeros in a row?" is a *COMPLETELY* different question from "What are the odds of getting a zero on the next roll?" >The > probability of only having sons is _not_ greater than that of having > sons and one daughter or vice-versa. And for that it does _not_ matter > how many children you have *because* it does _not_ matter how many > children you had before. The probability for a boy or a girl is *always* > the same. You are _not_ due for a boy if you have many girls, and not for a > girls if you have many boys. But that is precisely what your flawed logic > is implying. Yes, we all know what the gambler's fallacy is, but that's not what anyone is arguing. If you pick 8 random numbers between 0 and 9 (inclusive), then the odds of getting all zeros is (1/10)^8. Do you agree with that? The odds of getting NO zeros is (9/10)^8. Do you agree with that? Note that NEITHER of these scenarios say anything about a pre-condition. The first question is *NOT* asking "If you picked 7 random numbers between 0 and 9 and got 0 for all 7, what are the odds of getting another 0?" The answer to that is obviously 1/10, and anybody arguing something else would certainly be committing the Gambler's fallacy. > > Learn probability theory, and use a dictionary in Python when you want to > count random hits. I know enough probability theory to know that you're either wrong or you keep changing the problem to something nobody else has said in order to think you're right. > > -- > PointedEars > > Twitter: @PointedEars2 > Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
