Humodour

Oh, sorry, which one is that? If it's something silly where you misunderstand probability for the 1000th time in this thread, don't even bother waiting for a reply, though.

*facepalm* He's like a gift that keeps on giving. Except it's a gift your grandmother got you for your 22nd birthday and it's a bit embarrassing and certainly not something you'll ever use.

Hey Shryke - shouldn't be hard for me to play with you since you're a Kiwi and awake roughly the same times. USWest is also the server with the best pings for Oceania. I don't have much work this week or next, so I'm free pretty much all day. What suits you?

Good point. I lived in a house with actors and actresses many years ago, and they were ALL wankers. the actors and actresses we has met is, without exception... difficult. we has actual been friends with a few actors/actresses, but am gonna note that we thought they was all damaged or nutty to a lesser or greater degree. not wankers (some were very nice people) but all was kookie. HA! Good Fun! You are correct, of course. Damaged is a better description. But many of them hurt others by their damage. Like a backpack with a broken pole. You both are stereotyping a group of people because of the interests they share. There are other things to consider here, difference on generation, individual factors, not all actors can be "damaged" Yeah, they're being naive and ignorant to an extreme.

Um, lol! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value Hahahaha caught out once more, Dagon.

I think the reason people are getting so pissed off with Dagon's ignorance is not because he's ignorant, but because he's treating mathematics like religion or politics: some fluffy, up in the clouds thing which is subjective and unique for each individual. It ****ing-well is not. It's objective and well-defined and Dagon is straight-out wrong.

Try not to go off the subject, identical twins happen when a fertalized egg splits, what's so unlikely about that? Fine, two twins a bit common for you (lol)? What about octuplets. A 1 in 25 quadrillion chance (as per Hellin's Law). Are they impossible? Has anyone proved it to be true? That could hold for a woman with no unusual medical conditions, but there could be women who are more susceptible. It's known that fertility drugs greatly increase the chances (like octomom), some women may have natural conditions which do the same. The law could still hold for smaller litters, but a few women in the world with unusual conditions would greatly skew the chances at very low probabilities. Fair point. Let's focus on the normal woman only who birth octuplets then. Their chance is still 1 in 25 quadrillion.

It's really simple, Every pregnancy is a result of a 1/200 million (best odds) of a race/lottery. Actually longer if you include natural relationships rather than just a pitri dish version from a single coupling. No, getting a particular sperm would be those odds. Getting one of them is actually quite good, like 1 in 10, otherwise no one would ever be born. No two sperm have the exact same DNA. Transcription errors, minor dna mutations, and a bit of a blending between chromosomes (IIRC) all factor into the creation of a little tadpole. If they were almost exactly alike then everyone and their sibilings would be almost clones. Also factoring in X vs Y chromosomes. I had a bit of Anthro last semester but I'm starting to loose it again . If sperm was that close, eggs would be in a similar boat and we wouldn't have the genetic variation we needed in order to survive. Actually, most sperm are identical. The reason clones by birth are so very very very rare (not excluding order two monozygotic twins, which are just uncommon) is because of chromosomal recombination, which not only takes only 50% of the genetic data from the sperm and 50% from the egg, but can also happen at any location on the chromosomes, and this all happens PER CHROMOSOME, of which there are 23. Put simply: given a sperm and an egg, you can make an amazingly large number of genetically different (but genetically related) organisms.

Try not to go off the subject, identical twins happen when a fertalized egg splits, what's so unlikely about that? Fine, two twins a bit common for you (lol)? What about octuplets. A 1 in 25 quadrillion chance (as per Hellin's Law). Are they impossible?

Youve said this a few times now, and not to get too OT, but arent all sperm the same? Basically they are identical vessels used to carry and deposit the same DNA that all the sperm are carrying. There isnt multiple different versions of sperm, afaik, so he would always be "him", no? I believe you're incorrect, some sperm's genetic information has slight mutations that might not appear in other sperm - fairly sure that this is the case and not the "all sperm are created equal and with identical genetics" version you're suggesting. But this is drifting off topic (I'd be glad to discuss it with you though if you want to make another thread). I was being general in response to the example people were using which implied every sperm is different. What you said can happen (typically due to radiation or oxidation) but normal abnormalities are usually not a result of it.

OK guys, I take issue with the sperm example. All sperm from the same male are genetically identical. Even the unhealthy/mutated sperm (e.g. those with two tales) are sexually viable and contain the same genetic code. Other than that, carry on!

It's really simple, Every pregnancy is a result of a 1/200 million (best odds) of a race/lottery. Actually longer if you include natural relationships rather than just a pitri dish version from a single coupling. And then the odds that epigenetics and life experiences will produce the person that is Wrath of Dagon are even smaller still (think identical twins). Hey Dagon, are identical twins impossible?

Actually, that's pretty much EXACTLY what you have said multiple times in this thread. E.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alia_Sabur Anyway, back to probability! Pidesco's right: we wouldn't want to knock the thread off topic.

You're definitely right - the reason you can't grasp year 7 algebra is because I thoroughly enjoy punching a few cones with mates on occasion. Also I know a half-dozen 5th graders who understand particle physics, mate.

I think it's safe to say you don't have any clue whatsoever what an independent event is. Or what an event is. Or what probability is. I think it's safe to say that you didn't even do a subject in Signals and Systems and just googled "electrical engineering" and saw it contained this suitably eldritch topic in mathematics called 'Fourier transforms'. Because there's no way you'd be capable of actually understanding Fourier analysis, Wrath. That's not an insult, that's fact, and this thread is ample proof.

I think it's safe to say that while at some point in this thread, Wrath genuinely didn't understand how statistics work, he's now clearly just trolling. I'm not sure how successful his trolling is however, as I'm rather entertained!

LOL!

Has anybody ever noticed how much of a flirt Smurfette is? What a bicycle.

Some input from people who've played WoW would be interesting. Digital currency is arguably even more important there since it's something one pays for monthly and is required to have a long life span measured in multiple years.

I don't know whether Obsidian plan to implement dedicated servers for online play (e.g. Battle.net), but if they want to take that extra step and make their game truly great by doing son, they'll need to consider a few things. One of them is a way to make muling simple and easy whilst preventing infinite hoarding (a character limit is the typical method), another is trading. Specifically, how do you make your items (and hence the game) retain the same level of fun and wonder 1 or 2 years later as it did on opening day? What am I talking about? Well when that godly, uncommon item drops in the first few weeks of play, everyone is going to go "wow, nice find!". When that item drops 2 years later in an economy without some method of controlling inflation, the first noob you see will go "oh, I already have 2 of those". 1 year after Diablo 2 Classic, Blizzard released their expansion pack, and they understood this mechanic upon seeing how trading in D2C played out (duping didn't help). They introduced more Horadric Cube recipes. Multiple different recipes did roughly the same thing: they removed excess currency from the game. These recipes typically take the form of taking Stones of Jordan (now-defunct currency from Classic), or gems and high-level runes (LoD currency) and turning them into an item you MIGHT want - an upgraded armour/weapon, or a new rare item, etc. The key here is the recipe MIGHT work - so you often have to try multiple times (eliminating currency each time) to get what you want (e.g. a weapon with the maximum damage enhancement mod). Diablo 3 might not have a Cube, but you can bet your bottom dollar it will have transmutation like this. Another reason Blizzard did this was to construct a standard currency which was easily obtainable for all players but still valuable (gems and runes) rather than an item so rare it had to be duped (and in doing so constantly inflate prices) to make a viable currency (the unique ring Stone of Jordan). I doubt Blizzard new precisely what gems and runes would become the gold standard (heh), but they could be confident that at least some of them would because their rune and gem systems, as well as cube recipes, were so diverse.

The gambler's fallacy is nothing compared to the Monty Hall problem.

To be fair, a lot of mathematicians and statisticians are utterly clueless when it comes to the Monty Hall problem/fallacy. It's awesome.

Good point. I lived in a house with actors and actresses many years ago, and they were ALL wankers. the actors and actresses we has met is, without exception... difficult. we has actual been friends with a few actors/actresses, but am gonna note that we thought they was all damaged or nutty to a lesser or greater degree. not wankers (some were very nice people) but all was kookie. HA! Good Fun! Rather than actors having various levels of mental instability as you suggest, it's far more likely that the common traits of the personalities acting attracts (extroversion, whimsy, impulsivity, driven by intuition and thirst for new experiences) are simply alien to you by virtue of being antipodal to your own personality traits (which would at a guess be introversion, fastidity, compulsion and a conservative approach to problem solving). your not-so-clever attempt to get around tigs warning aside It helps when my post is actually serious and your characterisation of actors and artists as mentally unstable seems genuinely unfair. Perhaps you were simply being facetious. Whatever.

You can pretty much count anybody who did analysis or abstract algebra at uni to be a basic mathematician mate. Aybody who has passed those subjects possess a mathemtical brain and is worth listening to when it comes to discussions of logic or statistics as they have had to formally and rigourously prove a vast number of theorems from scratch.