I used to work at a Verizon call center. I didn't even realize there were other centers that wouldn't blow you off. We weren't able to access that kind of information; if you got me on the line when I worked there with that question, I almost certainly would have ended up bouncing you around.
Believe me, it's not that I'm not sympathetic to the issue, or that I get off on screwing someone, it's that Verizon's call centers (or at least, the one I was at) are so amazingly fucked up that, in that situation, I wouldn't have been able to help you if I tried.
Most likely. I'm just venting. A great crash course in what not to do in terms of UI, and a nice thought experiment in terms of trying to figure out WTF made interfacing with their database so miserable.
I think there's probably a market for an OEM for medium-savvy consumers. The people who aren't swayed by, "Look, it's in a pretty color!" (although that's nice, too) but don't want to have to research every model of every component.
You could do benchmarks on the hardware and then start color coding the systems you sell, then have a webapp to compare them in terms of performance metrics and real-world usage.
I'm sure it varies by region, but I can say that I've heard very few people who pronounce the word "orange" as "OR-anj."
For me, at least, it's a one-syllable word that sounds like "ornj". With a hint of a "ch" sound on the "j" depending on context. For instance, I say, "ornch juice."
I don't have a bizarre accent or speech impediment or anything; most people from any region of the US think I speak normally.
My school actually did this a few years ago on campus housing. Basically, Comcast got a monopoly on Internet access in student housing. There was a famously terrible school-sponsored wireless network, which was basically what you would use if you were feeling particularly masochistic.
Of course, the Comcast service was also terrible, but they didn't have much incentive to improve, being that their only competition was almost unusable.
Digital media will always be superior to physical:
1) You don't have to go to a store to pick it up. Amazon has a delivery time. GameStop is miles away, and has a closing time. Your games will show rather quickly on your hard drive, while you eat a sandwich.
2) You don't have to worry about physical media breaking or being lost or stolen or anything. I had all of my music CDs stolen while I was camped out for concert tickets in 2001. The ones I liked, I had to buy again. If your hard drive blows or you upgrade your machine, with a modern content delivery system, you can get your games back with virtually no hassle. (Might lose the saved data, though, unless you care enough to back it up.)
As for me, I've never much understood the reselling thing. If I buy something, I plan on keeping it. (I still have all of my textbooks from old classes.) I suppose some people might want to do that, but honestly, I'd rather just keep the game.
What's interesting is that you're claiming that the math behind this is a "number game" and yet you're arguing about numbers. With that approach, you could claim that the probability is 150%, and of course, since you apparently disdain mathematics, you wouldn't accept any proof otherwise.
So my alternative theory to TFA is that you have a hard time understanding this because you simply don't want to.
So, you're saying, I don't speak your language, your winters can get ridiculously cold, you use the metric system, and your variables are endlessly prefixed.
Even if you avoid tAoCP...I'll admit, I've only barely cracked the cover...every serious book on algorithms I've come across gives him several citations and at least a passing reference in the text or liner notes. Hell, my undergraduate discrete math book had a blurb in it where the author couldn't resist describing his attempt to collect $2.56 from Knuth.
Nope. Wrong. Age does matter. Not because it correlates with gender or anything, but because it makes the two children distinguishable. (E.g., one of them must be the older child, one must be the younger.)
You don't have to distinguish them with ages. You could distinguish them with height, e.g., "the taller child is a boy" or anything else.
Probability in this case is about how much information you have. The more information you have, the more you can refine your results. If I know that a parent has two children, then I can give the probability of both children being boys depending on how much information I have:
no further information ->.25 one child is a boy (but we don't know which one) ->.333 one child is a boy (and we do know which one) ->.5 one child is a boy, and so is the other child -> 1.0 one child is not a boy -> 0.0
TFA does a pretty good job of explaining why people have such a hard time understanding this. The reason is that they assume that the parent is picking a child at random and then stating their gender. That's not the process. If they choose one of their children at random and she happens to be a girl, they skip over her and then state the gender of the other child.
Suppose you took all of the people in the world who have 2 children and started tallying the genders of the older child and the younger child. You would get these results, in roughly equal proportions:
1/4 of these families have two boys, 1/4 have two girls, 1/4 of them have an older boy and a younger girl, and 1/4 of them have an older girl and a younger boy. So 1/2 of families with two children have one boy and one girl. This, I think, makes sense to everyone. If you don't specify that at least one of the children is a boy, then the chance of them having 2 boys is 1/4.
If you do specify that one of the children is a boy, then you can eliminate the girl-girl scenario. So then you're looking at the following possible outcomes:
So really, instead of having only two possibilities (boy-girl or boy-boy), there are 3 possibilities---boy-girl, girl-boy, and boy-boy. Each of them being equally likely. So the chances of them having 2 boys is actually 1/3.
The reason everyone thinks that the answer is 1/2 is because they think that the two children are distinguishable. They're not, in the problem given; you're not stipulating that Child A is a boy, you're saying that at least one of Child A or B is a boy. If you distinguish the children by saying something like, "My older child is a boy" then the gender of the younger child becomes independent, and is exactly 1/2.
That's what makes the Tuesday birthday problem so interesting. Usually, if we want to distinguish between the children, we use their ages, because this gives them perfect distinguishability. (You don't have 2 oldest children, for instance.) By saying that one of them is a boy born on Tuesday, you're giving that child more specific attributes, also making them more distinguishable.
If you say, "I have two children, one of whom is a boy named Bartholomew, who won the lottery in 2009, and was born on the day the Berlin Wall came down," then you've made an almost perfect distinction between the children, and the chances of the other child being a boy are very, very close to 0.5.
"I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys?".. this is the same as saying "I have just tossed a 10 pence coin and it has come up heads, what is the probability that another coin toss will come up heads?
No, it isn't. It's the same as saying, "I have just tossed a quarter twice, and given that it came up heads at least once, what's the chance it that it came up head both times?"
We can do an analogue, but not in the way you're saying. I.e., "I have just tossed a coin and it came up heads, what's the chance it will come up heads if I toss it again" == "I have just had a kid and it's a boy, if I have another kid, what's the chance it will be a boy" == 50%
If you don't understand the problem, that's fine. It's counterintuitive, these things usually take a second look. If you don't understand the problem and you want to claim the solution is incorrect because you don't get it, well, that's something else entirely.
I will never be able to speak fluent Norwegian, so I mean no offense when I say that the word you're looking for is "colleague." Unless you refer to your universities as "she."
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I used to work at a Verizon call center. I didn't even realize there were other centers that wouldn't blow you off. We weren't able to access that kind of information; if you got me on the line when I worked there with that question, I almost certainly would have ended up bouncing you around.
Believe me, it's not that I'm not sympathetic to the issue, or that I get off on screwing someone, it's that Verizon's call centers (or at least, the one I was at) are so amazingly fucked up that, in that situation, I wouldn't have been able to help you if I tried.
What's wrong with PayPal?
I'm not arguing, I'm genuinely curious.
Most likely. I'm just venting. A great crash course in what not to do in terms of UI, and a nice thought experiment in terms of trying to figure out WTF made interfacing with their database so miserable.
I also worked in a call center, and while we had the same needs, we didn't get anything like that.
Hm, that's dangerously close to this one. Better be careful.
Don't you mean:
Method For Converting Character Sequences into Neurochemical Comprehension?
It's certainly a step up from "Method for Intrapersonal Communication via Sequences of Orally-Emitted Sound."
Nice reference. I haven't felt that good since Archie Gemmel scored against Holland in 1978.
NinjaVideo, as far as I remember, does not. They're still down, anyway, unless someone else knows of a different domain name they might be using.
I think there's probably a market for an OEM for medium-savvy consumers. The people who aren't swayed by, "Look, it's in a pretty color!" (although that's nice, too) but don't want to have to research every model of every component.
You could do benchmarks on the hardware and then start color coding the systems you sell, then have a webapp to compare them in terms of performance metrics and real-world usage.
I have a better solution: how about I use something else why you cry about proprietary software being evil?
I'm sure it varies by region, but I can say that I've heard very few people who pronounce the word "orange" as "OR-anj."
For me, at least, it's a one-syllable word that sounds like "ornj". With a hint of a "ch" sound on the "j" depending on context. For instance, I say, "ornch juice."
I don't have a bizarre accent or speech impediment or anything; most people from any region of the US think I speak normally.
My school actually did this a few years ago on campus housing. Basically, Comcast got a monopoly on Internet access in student housing. There was a famously terrible school-sponsored wireless network, which was basically what you would use if you were feeling particularly masochistic.
Of course, the Comcast service was also terrible, but they didn't have much incentive to improve, being that their only competition was almost unusable.
Digital media will always be superior to physical:
1) You don't have to go to a store to pick it up. Amazon has a delivery time. GameStop is miles away, and has a closing time. Your games will show rather quickly on your hard drive, while you eat a sandwich.
2) You don't have to worry about physical media breaking or being lost or stolen or anything. I had all of my music CDs stolen while I was camped out for concert tickets in 2001. The ones I liked, I had to buy again. If your hard drive blows or you upgrade your machine, with a modern content delivery system, you can get your games back with virtually no hassle. (Might lose the saved data, though, unless you care enough to back it up.)
As for me, I've never much understood the reselling thing. If I buy something, I plan on keeping it. (I still have all of my textbooks from old classes.) I suppose some people might want to do that, but honestly, I'd rather just keep the game.
I need directions to your embassy.
What's interesting is that you're claiming that the math behind this is a "number game" and yet you're arguing about numbers. With that approach, you could claim that the probability is 150%, and of course, since you apparently disdain mathematics, you wouldn't accept any proof otherwise.
So my alternative theory to TFA is that you have a hard time understanding this because you simply don't want to.
So, you're saying, I don't speak your language, your winters can get ridiculously cold, you use the metric system, and your variables are endlessly prefixed.
Do I speak your language, and if so, how cold are your winters?
Even if you avoid tAoCP...I'll admit, I've only barely cracked the cover...every serious book on algorithms I've come across gives him several citations and at least a passing reference in the text or liner notes. Hell, my undergraduate discrete math book had a blurb in it where the author couldn't resist describing his attempt to collect $2.56 from Knuth.
Nope. Wrong. Age does matter. Not because it correlates with gender or anything, but because it makes the two children distinguishable. (E.g., one of them must be the older child, one must be the younger.)
You don't have to distinguish them with ages. You could distinguish them with height, e.g., "the taller child is a boy" or anything else.
Probability in this case is about how much information you have. The more information you have, the more you can refine your results. If I know that a parent has two children, then I can give the probability of both children being boys depending on how much information I have:
no further information -> .25 .333 .5
one child is a boy (but we don't know which one) ->
one child is a boy (and we do know which one) ->
one child is a boy, and so is the other child -> 1.0
one child is not a boy -> 0.0
TFA does a pretty good job of explaining why people have such a hard time understanding this. The reason is that they assume that the parent is picking a child at random and then stating their gender. That's not the process. If they choose one of their children at random and she happens to be a girl, they skip over her and then state the gender of the other child.
Here's the way to look at it:
Suppose you took all of the people in the world who have 2 children and started tallying the genders of the older child and the younger child. You would get these results, in roughly equal proportions:
1) Older=boy, younger=boy
2) Older=boy, younger=girl
3) Older=girl, younger=boy
4) Older=girl, younger=girl
1/4 of these families have two boys, 1/4 have two girls, 1/4 of them have an older boy and a younger girl, and 1/4 of them have an older girl and a younger boy. So 1/2 of families with two children have one boy and one girl. This, I think, makes sense to everyone. If you don't specify that at least one of the children is a boy, then the chance of them having 2 boys is 1/4.
If you do specify that one of the children is a boy, then you can eliminate the girl-girl scenario. So then you're looking at the following possible outcomes:
1) Older=boy, younger=boy
2) Older=boy, younger=girl
3) Older=girl, younger=boy
So really, instead of having only two possibilities (boy-girl or boy-boy), there are 3 possibilities---boy-girl, girl-boy, and boy-boy. Each of them being equally likely. So the chances of them having 2 boys is actually 1/3.
The reason everyone thinks that the answer is 1/2 is because they think that the two children are distinguishable. They're not, in the problem given; you're not stipulating that Child A is a boy, you're saying that at least one of Child A or B is a boy. If you distinguish the children by saying something like, "My older child is a boy" then the gender of the younger child becomes independent, and is exactly 1/2.
That's what makes the Tuesday birthday problem so interesting. Usually, if we want to distinguish between the children, we use their ages, because this gives them perfect distinguishability. (You don't have 2 oldest children, for instance.) By saying that one of them is a boy born on Tuesday, you're giving that child more specific attributes, also making them more distinguishable.
If you say, "I have two children, one of whom is a boy named Bartholomew, who won the lottery in 2009, and was born on the day the Berlin Wall came down," then you've made an almost perfect distinction between the children, and the chances of the other child being a boy are very, very close to 0.5.
No, it's slightly less than 0.5. If you add more caveats, it gets closer to 0.5.
Actually, I made a mistake up there...on the first line, I meant to take the Tuesday thing out. For reasons that are explained in the article.
"I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys?" .. this is the same as saying "I have just tossed a 10 pence coin and it has come up heads, what is the probability that another coin toss will come up heads?
No, it isn't. It's the same as saying, "I have just tossed a quarter twice, and given that it came up heads at least once, what's the chance it that it came up head both times?"
We can do an analogue, but not in the way you're saying. I.e., "I have just tossed a coin and it came up heads, what's the chance it will come up heads if I toss it again" == "I have just had a kid and it's a boy, if I have another kid, what's the chance it will be a boy" == 50%
If you don't understand the problem, that's fine. It's counterintuitive, these things usually take a second look. If you don't understand the problem and you want to claim the solution is incorrect because you don't get it, well, that's something else entirely.
I will never be able to speak fluent Norwegian, so I mean no offense when I say that the word you're looking for is "colleague." Unless you refer to your universities as "she."
The XKCD for that