Comments of alteredhistory (17)

Comment on post link friday: pay employees more!, gamifying relationships, free co-pays are probably good:
2013-08-16T15:21:42+00:00
A glimpse of the future...?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziHCvpikLh8

Comment on post Adventures in math: finding a red dot in a book, Marilyn vos Savant is wrong!:
2013-05-06T00:59:02+00:00
And when I run Bayes Theorem, I get similar non-linear result.

newx = (xy) / (xy + z(1-x))

https://plus.google.com/116077417321878358008/posts/Q9bHSEtesxQ

Given a 100 page book...

x = probability beforehand of dot NOT in book = 0.1
y = probability of first page being blank if the book does not have a red dot = 1 (total certainty)
z = probability of first page being blank if the book does have a red dot = 0.99 (because 99 of 100 pages do not have red dot)

newx = 0.100908
The probability decreases, as you expected, but not linearly.

Comment on post Adventures in math: finding a red dot in a book, Marilyn vos Savant is wrong!:
2013-05-05T23:09:59+00:00
We are both wrong. I ran the simulations. The probability fall off is weird.

https://plus.google.com/116077417321878358008/posts/YJrxFXHMCtY

Comment on post Adventures in math: finding a red dot in a book, Marilyn vos Savant is wrong!:
2013-05-05T19:28:23+00:00
Basically, my interpretation works for any position the author chooses for the dot. Yours only works if the author is randomly selecting pages.

Comment on post Adventures in math: finding a red dot in a book, Marilyn vos Savant is wrong!:
2013-05-05T19:27:20+00:00
Your theorem leads to an incorrect belief in the following scenario:

Let's say the author writes 100 books. He chooses 90 of those books to put a red dot in. He does NOT roll a die. Instead, he puts the red dot on the last page of every single book.

If that's the case, then when you read half of every book, you would encounter the red dot on none of them. Under your rule, you would then assume that none of the books included a red dot, with near certainty.

You are collecting information that does not apply.

On the other hand, my knowledge of the author suggests that he included the red dot *somewhere*. That it wasn't in the first half just tells me that he probably didn't use random positioning to choose the red dot's location -- which is more than likely true. So when I continue to believe that 90% of those books do include a red dot, I have the more correct view of the world _regardless of where the author *chooses* to put the dot_.

Comment on post Adventures in math: finding a red dot in a book, Marilyn vos Savant is wrong!:
2013-05-05T19:03:03+00:00
No. I am NOT saying there is a 90% chance of the red dot being there.
I am saying that *I EXPECT* there is a 90% chance of the red dot being there.

Those are two very different thing. I have no expectations when I start about which page the red dot will be on. None. So discovering that the dot is NOT on page 1 does not change my expectation about finding the dot *somewhere*.

Essentially, I am saying that I don't have a 90% expectation for any page *except* the last page that I check.

Comment on post Adventures in math: finding a red dot in a book, Marilyn vos Savant is wrong!:
2013-05-05T14:00:19+00:00
The counterargument to Greg: the expected probability of finding the dot on the first page is your expected probability for the whole book divided by the number of pages. When you do not find a dot on the first page, you know nothing more about the book as a whole, so the probability on the second page is slightly higher -- book probability divided by pages minus one. It is an asymptotic function with a big divide-by-zero when you check the final page.

The flaw in Greg's argument is that the expected probability is not the same as the actual probability. Whether or not the dot is included was decided by principles well beyond your knowledge. IF reading a page made you reevaluate the content of the book, then I would agree with part of Greg's analysis. But Bayes' Theorem requires an input of how confident you are in the original estimate and how confident you are that new information should make you reevaluate confidence

If you check a whole book, then you would adjust up or down your confidence up or down for the next whole book from that publisher. But having checked a single page does not make you reevaluate *this* book.

Comment on post linkstravaganza: defeating the norquist pledge, morgan freeman in an LGBT ad, C++ pitfalls:
2013-03-09T22:21:07+00:00
Tax breaks to encourage charitable giving. Tax breaks to encourage home ownership. Taxes to discourage smoking. Tax policy drives all sorts of behaviors.

I actually agree with Grover to that degree. My difference is that I fully support the government providing those guidances because -- assuming all else is working as intended -- they are guidances that we have all agreed upon by voting in our republic. Some significant amount of conformity is necessary to allow us to have freedom -- because "freedom to" is no more or less important than "freedom from". The far Right seems to value "freedom to" far more, IMHO.

Comment on post linkstravaganza: defeating the norquist pledge, morgan freeman in an LGBT ad, C++ pitfalls:
2012-12-11T16:35:37+00:00
> (I'm talking about economics here, not, say, civil rights and such)

So is Norquist. For him, taxation is about civil rights, since it is through the tax code that we control so much American behavior and how we finance so much of the rest of the infastructure that gives government power. If you're carving a civil rights exception, then Norquist isn't all that off base, if you accept his premises.

Comment on post links that made me angry:
2012-10-03T09:34:15+00:00
Just mail them a copy of The Jungle.

Comment on post let's all calm down re Chick-Fil-A:
2012-08-01T15:27:41+00:00
If Chick-Fil-A is going to make money by opposing gay marriage, I think that legitimizes boycotting them for the same:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/chick-fil-supporters-gather-appreciation-day/story?id=16904664

Comment on post let's all calm down re Chick-Fil-A:
2012-07-23T08:51:04+00:00
Unless something has changed in the last few years, Chick-Fil-A are worth boycotting. The last time I dug into this, they were a very strong supporter of the Chick Tracts, which is a very intolerant and proactively lobbying group of extraordinarily offensive material. http://www.chick.com/default.asp I spent a few minutes just now trying to validate this accusation of mine... I could not find any citations of a relationship between them on Google. The relationship is one that I was told about in college, and Chick Tracts was such an evil organization on campus that I'm more than happy to boycott them for that relationship.

Comment on post theocracy on the march:
2012-05-12T08:52:17+00:00
Just a star next to the state name would suffice I think.

Comment on post theocracy on the march:
2012-03-21T20:53:49+00:00
Also... out of curiosity... have you thought about adding the 5 US territories to the map? Guam, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the North Mariana Islands. I've got no idea what the status of law is there.

Also, two Native American tribes in USA now grant full marriage rights. The semi-sovereign nation status of the tribes makes things interesting, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has legally tested the US Federal governments requirement to recognize such marriages.

Comment on post theocracy on the march:
2012-03-21T20:49:01+00:00
Your map is missing "legal pending repeal" and "illegal pending repeal". You'll feel a lot more upbeat once you take into account the 6 states that will be voting in November, particularly if you've been watching the poll numbers.

Comment on post Software development tools I'm grateful for:
2011-09-10T02:07:10+00:00
* STOB (aka Sync To Old Builds), which uses Source Code Control but is a tool in its own right.

* If debugging using LabVIEW, the ability to break into any function and archive its panel so you can re-run just that subroutine with the same inputs until you get it right.

* ACL2 Theorem Prover takes in code and a set of assertions about the postconditions of that code and generates a human-readable mathematical proof of correctness... or returns a "cannot be proved" message, generally with at least one test case that fails your assertions. ACL2 is specific to reasoning about LISP code, but recent libraries have allowed it to make assertions about other languages when the functions can be mechanically restated as LISP.

* Good old desk checking with a buddy. "Does this look right to you?"

Comment on post Marriage Map: cartogram, more crazy reviews:
2011-08-27T20:34:35+00:00
Um... what about Cruella DeVille?

PS: I'm someone you know IRL, just not someone you've met on LJ before... :-)

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