Wrath of Dagon

@krezack No, what's safe to say that no one in this thread except me seems to understand how probabilty works. Which really isn't surprising, I remember in my signals and systems class almost no one could understand Fourier transforms, even though everyone was at least in the top 5% of students worldwide.

@ alanschu The problem is you're assuming he already won the first lottery. All I conceeded was that it was possible for him to win, not that he's already won. You can't just take a 1/1000 chance and then split it into 3 1/10 chances and then claim it's all the same because you're already assuming he won the first 2 because the chances are so reasonable.

I already said it is.

Odds of 1 in 1 million are certainly not impossible. If you'd like, I could do the exact same example with 1/1000 odds. It'll just take me more message board posts to accomplish it. Go ahead.

Let's try this: Chuck just won a lottery. This lottery has a chance of winning it of 1 in a million. What is the probability that Chuck wins this lottery again? If he buys one ticket one time, 1 in a million. Don't distract yourself with "one ticket" stuff. I have fixed the odds to control for it and simplify situation. The odds of winning this lottery is one in a million and is static. I will assume that you feel that the odds of chuck winning another lottery is possible. Chuck wins this lottery (an event that can possibly happen). As a result, he has now won two lotteries. What is the probability that Chuck wins this lottery again? Your assumption is wrong. Odds of one in 1 million are impossible, Chuck will never win the second lottery. I can believe may be odds of 1 in 1000, but not 1 in 1 million.

Sorry, but you've been pawned by funcroc. But anyways, yeay!

She won it twice on the same day. The odds of this happening are roughly 1 in 23 trillion. Nope, they're not. That article doesn't know what it's talking about, just like the 4 time winner article I posted was claiming odds of septillions, which is entirely bogus. Since the lottery probably happens once a week, the odds of winning two in the same day are 52 times greater than the odds of winning 2 in a year, etc.

Let's try this: Chuck just won a lottery. This lottery has a chance of winning it of 1 in a million. What is the probability that Chuck wins this lottery again? If he buys one ticket one time, 1 in a million.

Yep, including hard/ recruit and hard/ no ranged weapons. To be clear though: I did hide behind things, I just didn't use them as formal-spacebar-press cover. Well sure, I did that a lot too, out of necessity. But you can't do crit shots from cover that way, or see and aim properly sometimes, or in general play the game the way it seems to have been designed.

You insist bringing this number up despite it having been shown to be nothing better than a guess. You said you were trying to estimate the order of magnitude, but nothing in your methodology fills me with confidence that you have anywhere close to the correct probability, or even order of magnitude. Earlier in this thread I demonstrated the correct method for solving this kind of problem, which you declared to be "completely wrong for reasons you are too lazy to explain". I must know insist that you explain what exactly was wrong in my math, other than that it disagreed with your made-up number. To make a decent estimate for the probability of this event, you need to have estimates for a single ticket winning, and for the amount of tickets the lady has purchased over her life. The only doubt I had about my derivation is whether you have to divide by the amount she spent once or several times. After thinking about is some more, I'm now confident it's only once, since she'd have to spend that money to even be in the pool which could likely win the lottery the second time. As far as your calculation, you'd have to show me the exact calculation you used since I can't tell what you're doing. You seem to have forgotten to include the factorial in the binomial theorem. I'm not sure I follow here. I just want to make sure we're clear: are you saying that after someone wins the lottery, the chances of them winning another lottery is less than the chances of some other unique individual winning the lottery? My next post depends on your answer. No, I'm saying the potential pool of people who have already won the lottery once is a lot smaller than the potential pool of people who can win the lottery for the first time. That has already been posted. She only won the lottery twice, with the second one being a relatively high chance lottery. I already said it's possible for someone to win the lottery twice, there are several people who have done it, and the odds say it will happen every few years.

How about this? Or this? Or this? Or even, given the probably of a group of atoms occupying any specific quantum state at a certain time is remote, some magnetic phenomenae occur that rely on the existence of certain quantum states. All of those probability claims are obviously bogus, you'll note they don't even show derivation. And how, exactly, is this about feeling better? This is about you getting math wrong and making asinine claims, nothing more and nothing less. You're the most asinine around here, I'm tired of trying to dispute your stupidity.

Name me another even that happened that had 100 trillion to one odds. But regardless, whatever makes you feel better.

I didn't say you would win in this situation. I'm trying to illustrate that the odds of a specific person winning are less than the odds of someone in the group winning. Edit: What I'm trying to say is that for all practical purposes they can't happen. To repeat once again, if something can only happen once in a trillion years, you're will not ever see it happen. If you don't believe that, there's nothing more I can say to you.

Actually what you said are the same thing. It's actually the difference between a pre-selected person winning and anyone in the world winning. Let's say you and your 9 friends have to pull out a correct card. You each have 1/5 chance of success. The chances that any one of you gets the correct card are a lot higher than that it's specifically you that gets the correct card.

OK, what the MH problem illustrates is that people are used to thinking about probabilities of random independent events. They get confused because in this case the events (which door has what) are not independent since MH knows which doors have the goats and acts accordingly. Edit: A simple way to explain it is that MH not opening your door tells you nothing, since he's not allowed to open the door you picked. However, his not opening the other door makes it more likely that the car is behind that door, since he's also not allowed to open the door with the car, so that's the door you should pick.

I don't see how anyone can say that having bad things happen to oneself gives a license to somebody to victimize someone else.

Did you play it on hard? Because most of the time I survived exactly two hits out of cover.

Are you talking about the gambler's fallacy? What mathematicians and statistians are clueless about it?

I'm calculating orders of magnitude, not exact numbers. So for a specific person to win 4 times over a period of time in which she spent an amount of money y playing would be approximately 16 million to the fourth power divided by y. The chance of someone winning once we know is 1. The chance of someone winning twice has also been calculated previously and it amounts to someone winning every few years, and that's where the y divisor comes in. So now that only leaves the 16 million squared term, which is what I used. I'm willing to concede I could be off somewhat in this reasoning, but in any case it comes out to a huge number against anyone in the world winning 4 times.

Given Dagon's comments of: "After that, the chances of one of the double winners winning again twice is 1 in 100 trillion, which is clearly impossible," he's stating that the odds of winning two more lotteries, after winning two previous ones, is somehow lower. What he is basically saying with his statement is that, if you flip 4 coins, if the first two are heads, the probability of the next two being heads are less than what they actually are. In more layman's terms, he stated that the odds of these two coin flips being heads is less than 0.25. No, the reason it matters that she already won twice is because at the start you have the entire pool of everyone in the world who plays the lottery who can potentially win once. But when you only count people who already won twice, you only got a handful of people who potentially could win the third time. Sure, the odds of a particular person in the pool winning are still the same as the first time, but now you only got a handful who can win at all. Well, I assumed there's only a few people who've won twice, let's call it x, so the odds of one of them winning twice are approximately 16 million squared divided by x.

Exactly, and she won 4 times, so that's what you have to calculate. Also you can't confuse the odds of a particular person winning, and the odds of someone in the world winning. And no, I don't think there are any mathematicians here. And yes, I did take the average amount spent by people who won once into calculating the odds of one of them winning the second time. I don't think you'd take that into account for the 3rd and 4th calculation because the total odds are only divided by that number once.

Her chances of winning again are 1 in 16 million. Her chances of winning 4 times are 1 in 100 trillion. The only reason it's not surprising she won the first time is because someone has to win. It's not surprising the second time because there are thousands of lottery winners spending thousands of dollars to play lotteries, so one of them will win again every few years. After that, the chances of one of the double winners winning again twice is 1 in 100 trillion, which is clearly impossible.

I was first in my college probabilty class. Of course you were. I'll bet that college also taught creationism as a core component of its biology degrees. No, it was the university that invented nano-technology. And yes, I know infinitesimal means the value of a variable as it approaches 0. I was using the term in the colloquial sense of very close to 0, as pointed out previously. And Balthamael, your math is completely wrong, I'm too lazy to go into why. Normally the chances of winning the lottery are about 1 in 16 million, from that the chances of someone winning 4 times is about 1 in 100 trillion. Remember, she's not the only one who's playing the lottery, and all we need are the chances of someone winning 4 times in one of the lotteries in the world over a period of a few years say, not necessarily this particular person. Btw, I guess there's also the possibility that the story is a hoax to start with.

I find it exceptionally surprising that I have to explain the obvious. This thread is like trying to give a math lecture in an insane asylum. No wonder the West is in decline.