vpFREE2 Forums

Best Randomness Analogy Contest

#1

I would like to start a contest for the best analogy to explain why it's a bad

idea to look for patterns in random events.

Unless you already know all the probabilities involved with 100% certainty (are you sure you know them all?), I don't think it's a bad idea to look for patterns in random events. You just have to be careful with your conclusions. It's like the conclusion that real estate never goes down. That's only true if you filter the data first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorsach_test
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasseography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnMLGkj91Og
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5e1oaen-M

#2

I would like to start a contest for the best analogy to explain why it's a bad idea to look for patterns in random events.

I have an example of why sometimes it's a good idea to look for patterns in supposedly random events. If nobody bothered to look for patterns in the American Coin scandal, the machines would still be operating today.

http://www.google.com/search?q="American+Coin+scandal"

I agree that if you specify a random variable that's 50% heads or 50% tails, there's no particular reason to run a Monte Carlo sim to figure out the possible results. But the real world is rarely that cut and dried, even coin flips are up to dispute:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1697475

Also check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator

#3

One of my alltime favorite movie clips. You made my day. thanks

ยทยทยท

--- On Tue, 1/4/11, nightoftheiguana2000 <nightoftheiguana2000@yahoo.com> wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnMLGkj91Og

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]