And why the shitting crikey are you using the binomial distribution? HIV infection is a rare event with numerous chances to happen, so it will be well modelled by a Poisson distribution.
The trouble is, laws like this are incredibly difficult to get rid of. What politician wants to stand up and denounce such a law, at the risk of looking like a Nazi sympathiser?
These articles don't want to point out the fact that entrepreneurs have already tried, and failed pretty miserably, at taking on the higher education market before, and other than using the internet, I don't see much difference between what was tried then and what this guy is proposing.
The Open University in the UK did just that, and they did it really successfully.
Bah, this is just Labour trying to score a couple of brownie points since they're about to get trounced in the election next year. Some PR drone probably stumbled across the petition and thought "Ok, this sounds like a good idea and it won't hurt the government's image, we might as well do it".
You may not realise it, but you're missing out. If you've memorised the multiplication tables from 1x1 to 9x9, you can multiply any two digit numbers in your head trivially. If you've memorised the multiplication tables from 1x1 to 99x99, you can multiply any four digit numbers in your head trivially. It's a simple application of what you learned in school: (A+B)(C+D) = AC + AD + BC + BD. for 17x16, (10+7)(10+6) = 10*10 + 10*6 + 7*10 + 7*6. Four quick additions in place of one difficult multiplication.
On the other hand, we should be surprised if we catch a one-in-a-billion event after a mere 370 observations. When the weirdness happens more often than we think it should, we should definitely be surprised.
(Note for./ pedants: I pulled the one-in-a-billion figure out of thin air to illustrate a point, no need to call me up on it.)
Perhaps you picked your words wrong then. "How presumptuous is it..." reads as a rhetorical question, with the implication being "it is presumptuous...".
Well, I only phrased it that way to highlight the lack of reasoning in the GP. You could replace the word "President" with the word "Administration" and my point remains valid.
Obama spent more in 6 months than our last president did in his entire 8 years.
...cleaning up the mess the previous two presidents left (yes, Clinton too). Either you're being disingenuous because it suits your partisan games, or you're just a fool.
Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain.
...but I would be interested to know how often substrings of digits repeat.
Here's an interesting problem: Do arbitrarily long substrings of digits occur an infinite number of times in the decimal expansion of PI? If not, what is the length of the longest substring S that repeats infinitely often?
In the example you give, perhaps you're thinking of Champernowne's number, 0.123456789101112.... This is an irrational number, and was the first number proven to be normal.
As it was described there, the experiment is flawed: it doesn't necessarily test the ability to delay gratification for a larger reward. They need to account for the percentage of kids who would not have eaten the marshmallow even without the possibility of a second marshmallow, i.e. the kids who aren't eating it because they were effectively told not to.
A cash prize like that is more like a recognition of the achievement than an incentive to compete. Same way no-one goes after the Fields medal for the money.
My intention was not to make them sound reasonable, I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was just trying to point out that in this situation, as in so many other things, there's no clearly defined good or evil. They're not trying to reign down destruction on our heads because of our decadent Western ways. But that's the sense you pick up from so many news reports and editorials.
The GP had an element of that and I guess that's what I was objecting to.
You know, the whole point behind those attacks was not to destroy the West, or wipe us off the map, or any of that rubbish.
The main demands the Al Quaida originally made were that US forces withdraw from Saudi Arabia, and for Palestine to be recognised and given equal support to Israel. That was before every fundamentalist nutjob in Islam was invoking the name Al Quaida though ( PDF here, for reference).
I'm sorry to say, no matter what the media would have you believe, these guys aren't SPECTRE. They just want to be left alone. Throw rocks at a wasps' nest, and what do you expect to happen?
Slashdot Mirror
Where are you getting 50% from?
And why the shitting crikey are you using the binomial distribution? HIV infection is a rare event with numerous chances to happen, so it will be well modelled by a Poisson distribution.
The trouble is, laws like this are incredibly difficult to get rid of. What politician wants to stand up and denounce such a law, at the risk of looking like a Nazi sympathiser?
What are the odds these cameras won't be able to distinguish between people fighting and people shagging?
These articles don't want to point out the fact that entrepreneurs have already tried, and failed pretty miserably, at taking on the higher education market before, and other than using the internet, I don't see much difference between what was tried then and what this guy is proposing.
The Open University in the UK did just that, and they did it really successfully.
Bah, this is just Labour trying to score a couple of brownie points since they're about to get trounced in the election next year.
Some PR drone probably stumbled across the petition and thought "Ok, this sounds like a good idea and it won't hurt the government's image, we might as well do it".
You may not realise it, but you're missing out.
If you've memorised the multiplication tables from 1x1 to 9x9, you can multiply any two digit numbers in your head trivially.
If you've memorised the multiplication tables from 1x1 to 99x99, you can multiply any four digit numbers in your head trivially. It's a simple application of what you learned in school: (A+B)(C+D) = AC + AD + BC + BD. for 17x16, (10+7)(10+6) = 10*10 + 10*6 + 7*10 + 7*6. Four quick additions in place of one difficult multiplication.
Infamous
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I always thought that film would be much improved if Goose had survived but was left a vegetable.
Worse than sending troops across borders and providing cash to murderous Contras, is it?
On the other hand, we should be surprised if we catch a one-in-a-billion event after a mere 370 observations. When the weirdness happens more often than we think it should, we should definitely be surprised.
(Note for ./ pedants: I pulled the one-in-a-billion figure out of thin air to illustrate a point, no need to call me up on it.)
Perhaps you picked your words wrong then. "How presumptuous is it..." reads as a rhetorical question, with the implication being "it is presumptuous...".
Well, I only phrased it that way to highlight the lack of reasoning in the GP. You could replace the word "President" with the word "Administration" and my point remains valid.
Obama spent more in 6 months than our last president did in his entire 8 years.
...cleaning up the mess the previous two presidents left (yes, Clinton too). Either you're being disingenuous because it suits your partisan games, or you're just a fool.
Sorry for feeding the trolls.
Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain.
...but I would be interested to know how often substrings of digits repeat.
Here's an interesting problem: Do arbitrarily long substrings of digits occur an infinite number of times in the decimal expansion of PI? If not, what is the length of the longest substring S that repeats infinitely often?
In the example you give, perhaps you're thinking of Champernowne's number, 0.123456789101112....
This is an irrational number, and was the first number proven to be normal.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, rationalise.
Life's too short NOT to do this stuff.
As it was described there, the experiment is flawed: it doesn't necessarily test the ability to delay gratification for a larger reward.
They need to account for the percentage of kids who would not have eaten the marshmallow even without the possibility of a second marshmallow, i.e. the kids who aren't eating it because they were effectively told not to.
A cash prize like that is more like a recognition of the achievement than an incentive to compete. Same way no-one goes after the Fields medal for the money.
Well, if there was an ebay-type system which allowed you to give feedback on your opponents, you could reduce the likelihood of that happening a bit.
Tried Plasma Pong?
http://download.cnet.com/Plasma-Pong/3000-2099_4-10511143.html
My intention was not to make them sound reasonable, I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was just trying to point out that in this situation, as in so many other things, there's no clearly defined good or evil. They're not trying to reign down destruction on our heads because of our decadent Western ways. But that's the sense you pick up from so many news reports and editorials.
The GP had an element of that and I guess that's what I was objecting to.
You know, the whole point behind those attacks was not to destroy the West, or wipe us off the map, or any of that rubbish.
The main demands the Al Quaida originally made were that US forces withdraw from Saudi Arabia, and for Palestine to be recognised and given equal support to Israel. That was before every fundamentalist nutjob in Islam was invoking the name Al Quaida though ( PDF here, for reference).
I'm sorry to say, no matter what the media would have you believe, these guys aren't SPECTRE. They just want to be left alone. Throw rocks at a wasps' nest, and what do you expect to happen?
The benefits? You're slightly less likely to get knocked over?
You can run like a horse, or climb trees like a leopard.