On Oct 3, 2011, at 9:28 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Both wrong. Where'd you guys get those 1% values, anyway?
1 - 0.001 = 0.999, sure enough.
But 0.999 ^ 100 = 0.904792147...., which means there's about 90%
chance of no catastrophe, or about 10% chance of a mess.
Strangely, neither of you got the 10% number, even though it's not
just correct, it's also what you'd guess if you didn't know
anything (1 chance in 1000, repeated 100 times, give about 1 chance
in 10 of hitting).
Have you never heard of a typo or clerical error? I make them all
the time.
It is nice to see someone actually read that post.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
