Marrying your sister.

[xoggoth]

What a truly awful thought!

[BrilloPad]

Actually no. If you take just 23 people, the odds of two of them having the same birthday is about 0.5. Strange but true.

Indeed. The maths are very very interesting. Take 85 people from uk. 5000 primary schools in total. 0.5 chance that 2 of the 85 went to same primary school.

I did some stats in my final year of Maths degree at Exeter. And the above still freaks me!

[sasguru]

Indeed. The maths are very very interesting. Take 85 people from uk. 5000 primary schools in total. 0.5 chance that 2 of the 85 went to same primary school.

I did some stats in my final year of Maths degree at Exeter. And the above still freaks me!

Indeed I find the maths fascinating. Brillo, I think you would enjoy

"Understanding Probability - Chance Rules in Everyday Life" by Henk Tijms.

[NotAllThere]

Try Roger Penrose - The Road to Reality.

I completely understood chapter 1-6. After I entered a whole new universe of bewilderment. Got to chapter 12 ( Manifolds of n dimensions ). I'm going to keep going in the hope that I'll hit something I understand. Current chapter (13) is about group theory - but when it gets to cyclical groups I know I'll have trouble.

[sasguru]

Try Roger Penrose - The Road to Reality.

I completely understood chapter 1-6. After I entered a whole new universe of bewilderment. Got to chapter 12 ( Manifolds of n dimensions ). I'm going to keep going in the hope that I'll hit something I understand. Current chapter (13) is about group theory - but when it gets to cyclical groups I know I'll have trouble.

Is that the hefty tome I saw in the bookshop? It scares me.
I read "The Emperors New Mind" and that was difficult enough. I wish I had done a pure maths degree now.

[El_Diablo]

Try Roger Penrose - The Road to Reality.

Yeh it's massive, circa 1000 pages.

I too was scared of it.

[NotAllThere]

Is that the hefty tome I saw in the bookshop? It scares me.
I read "The Emperors New Mind" and that was difficult enough. I wish I had done a pure maths degree now.

Nah - I've got one of those. Doesn't help! Road to Reality is harder. I'll pass it on to my 16 year old son and ask him to explain it to me.

[Sysman]

Actually no. If you take just 23 people, the odds of two of them having the same birthday is about 0.5. Strange but true.

I remember that one from early on in my stats course at Uni. Since there were 100 plus students attending that lecture, the lecturer got us to write down our birthdays and compare them. The results bore out the theory remarkably well.

linky

Another bit of stats that sticks in mind from applied maths (much later on) was that if you toss a coin enough times and the results veer away from 0.5, then tossing the coin more times won't bring the results back to 0.5. I honestly can't remember the details of that one, but that lecturer set his HP programmable calculator on the job for the length of the lecture to prove that point.

Can anyone else here remember similar?

[sasguru]

Another bit of stats that sticks in mind from applied maths (much later on) was that if you toss a coin enough times and the results veer away from 0.5, then tossing the coin more times won't bring the results back to 0.5. I honestly can't remember the details of that one, but that lecturer set his HP programmable calculator on the job for the length of the lecture to prove that point.

Can anyone else here remember similar?

I think you're thinking about the "random walk". But the law of large numbers means that it will veer back to 0.5 eventually, theoretically after an infinite amount of tosses.

[BrilloPad]

Indeed I find the maths fascinating. Brillo, I think you would enjoy

"Understanding Probability - Chance Rules in Everyday Life" by Henk Tijms.

appreciate the tip. I like you and like our posts, so I just bought off Amazon. I nearly bauked at £14.50 - I am only a contractor you know!

I guess now you will recommend "great squirrels have known"? :-)