Probability
Created | Updated Oct 7, 2002
IN PROGRESS: scratchpad article only.
79% of people do not understand statistics at all, and make the most unbelievably basic errors over and over again.
If you are one of these then you probably accepted my made-up figure of 79% without question. That's how little you want to have anything to do with statistics.
Statistics, and its sister subject, probability, are unappealing to people because in a fundamental and very important way, they make no sense whatsoever.
The average Eurpoean man has 1.9 children.
You stand a chance of one in fourteen million of winning the National Lottery.
In an average lifetime, you will breathe 25 atoms also once breathed by Einstein.
How will you know when Einstein's atoms enter your lungs? If I win the lottery, does this mean that last week, the probability of my winning was one in fourteen million? What do 0.9 children look like? Even on a numerical level, it's a grisly thought.
Statistics and probability do not mean anything which we can relate to something we will actually experience. Events happen, or don't. I arrive at the airport a minute after my flight is supposed to stop people boarding and the probability of a delay of over a minute for this flight is fourteen per cent. Will I make my connection? What will I tell you when I'm stranded on the airport concourse? If I take the flight a hundred times, will I miss it foe eighty-six of them? What if the probability doesn't extend to all one hundred of those flights?
Quantum mechanics is also unlike anything we will ever experience, but it really happens. Interestingly, it relies on probability.
Regard an electron. Like a child, there is always a whole electron. Half an electron cannot be.
79% of people do not understand statistics at all, and make the most unbelievably basic errors over and over again.
If you are one of these then you probably accepted my made-up figure of 79% without question. That's how little you want to have anything to do with statistics.
Statistics, and its sister subject, probability, are unappealing to people because in a fundamental and very important way, they make no sense whatsoever.
The average Eurpoean man has 1.9 children.
You stand a chance of one in fourteen million of winning the National Lottery.
In an average lifetime, you will breathe 25 atoms also once breathed by Einstein.
How will you know when Einstein's atoms enter your lungs? If I win the lottery, does this mean that last week, the probability of my winning was one in fourteen million? What do 0.9 children look like? Even on a numerical level, it's a grisly thought.
Statistics and probability do not mean anything which we can relate to something we will actually experience. Events happen, or don't. I arrive at the airport a minute after my flight is supposed to stop people boarding and the probability of a delay of over a minute for this flight is fourteen per cent. Will I make my connection? What will I tell you when I'm stranded on the airport concourse? If I take the flight a hundred times, will I miss it foe eighty-six of them? What if the probability doesn't extend to all one hundred of those flights?
Quantum mechanics is also unlike anything we will ever experience, but it really happens. Interestingly, it relies on probability.
Regard an electron. Like a child, there is always a whole electron. Half an electron cannot be.
