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From: Ostap Bender on 2 Jun 2010 18:03
On Jun 2, 7:28 am, "John L. Barber" <jlbar...(a)lanl.gov> wrote:
> > > > (Note that 13/26 = 0.481481.)
>
> > > How much did you pay for your calculator? You
> > > overpaid.
>
> > 13/26 = 0.5 according to me.
>
> > john overpaid.
>
> > maybe we should abolish fractions now ? :p
>
> Dammit. I edited that post to read "13/27 = 0.481481" moments after I posted it.
>
> How come no one can see the correction but me?

Have you ever read Andersen's The King's New Clothes?
From: Rob Johnson on 2 Jun 2010 18:07
In article <hu6iec$gkh$1(a)news-int.gatech.edu>,
Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18(a)verizon.invalid> wrote:
>On 06/02/2010 01:29 PM, Jesse F. Hughes wrote:
>> Of course, that probably has little to do with mathforum's edit
>> functionality. Who knows how they implemented that and whether they
>> bothered trying to propagate it to Usenet?
>
>Doesn't look like it. My newsserver accepted cancels and Supersedes when
>I last checked (I do recall this because there was a troll superseding
>someone's posts with vulgar drivel), and I see a 13/26.
>
>Or it could be that one of these servers doesn't propagate such messages:
>pitt.edu
>news.cse.ohio-state.edu
>news.glorb.com
>news2.glorb.com
>news.glorb.com
>tr22g12.aset.psu.edu
>news.mathforum.org

I tried Supersedes several years ago and it failed to do what it was
supposed to. I had assumed that it had been phased out due to the
dangers it posed, but perhaps it was simply that the server I used
didn't support it.

Rob Johnson <rob(a)trash.whim.org>
take out the trash before replying
to view any ASCII art, display article in a monospaced font
From: Bastian Erdnuess on 2 Jun 2010 20:35
John L. Barber wrote:

> I'd just like to mention that I've just done a small simulation of
> this process. [...]

> I keep track of Ntb, the total number of pairs so far which have
> included at least one Tuesday Boy, as well as Nbb_tb, the number of
> pairs containing at least one Tuesday Boy which also contain two boys.

How do you see from the OP that you really get informed about the
Tuesday Boy in anycase where there is a Tuesday Boy in the family?

Why should it be supposed to not happen that you have a pair say a
Sunday�Girl and a Tuesday Boy but you get only informed about that there
is a Sunday Girl in the family?

A similar question (with insufficient information) is the following:
"You throw two dice. Ana has a look at them and tells you that there is
a five within the dice. How big is the probability that you have thrown
doublets?"

Cheers,
Bastian
From: John L. Barber on 2 Jun 2010 17:04
> John L. Barber wrote:
>
> > I'd just like to mention that I've just done a
> small simulation of
> > this process. [...]
>
> > I keep track of Ntb, the total number of pairs so
> far which have
> > included at least one Tuesday Boy, as well as
> Nbb_tb, the number of
> > pairs containing at least one Tuesday Boy which
> also contain two boys.
>
> How do you see from the OP that you really get
> informed about the
> Tuesday Boy in anycase where there is a Tuesday Boy
> in the family?

It's not explicitly stated.

However, this type of problem is of a certain class of problems (the archetype being the Monty Hall problem) in which the same types of assumptions are always made.

The opening poster knew that the people on a forum like this one, being math-game-oriented folks, would be familiar with this kind of problem, in which the "you always get informed" assumption is always implicit.

In other words, it is assumed that the readers know the basic ground rules that invariably accompany such puzzles.
From: Tim Little on 2 Jun 2010 22:08
On 2010-06-02, Ostap Bender <ostap_bender_1900(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> Here is more information for you: I have two children, and one of them
> is a boy born on a Tuesday who has brown hair, reads comic books, and
> is left-handed.
>
> Is that going to change your probabilities?

For the three examples of fairly reasonable interpretations I posted
previously in this subthread: no, no, and yes respectively.

What do you expect with an ambiguous question?


- Tim
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