Chance News 38: Difference between revisions
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==An improbable event and a coincidence== | ==An improbable event and a coincidence== | ||
(:) I have an example of an improbable event and a coincidence; it | |||
shows the difference between them. At Forrest's graduation last | shows the difference between them. At Forrest's graduation last | ||
night, all of the seniors marched, in alphabetical order, to the | night, all of the seniors marched, in alphabetical order, to the | ||
Revision as of 14:12, 12 June 2008
Quotations
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
Paul Erdős
Forsooth
An improbable event and a coincidence
(:) I have an example of an improbable event and a coincidence; it shows the difference between them. At Forrest's graduation last night, all of the seniors marched, in alphabetical order, to the stage to receive their diplomas. The women were wearing gray gowns and the men were wearing black gowns. I was careful to note any siblings (as far as I could tell, there were none). GREAT! So now we have a random sequence of coin tosses of length about 310, and the coin is pretty close to fair. The longest sequence of consecutive men I observed was 9; this is somewhat longer than the expected length of the longest run of heads, which is about 7, and somewhat longer than the expected length of the longest run of either heads or tails, which is about 8. So I observed a fairly unusual event. The coincidence is that Forrest was in the longest run of men.
An email from Charles Grinstead to Laurie Snell