no, it isn't. I've listened to your arguments and responded, you just keep saying the same thing in the same way only with insults. Very intelligentSeymourB post=18.73797.809682 said:
Poll: A little math problem
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I'd assume a third year math major would have a descent grasp on grammar, and typing skills, not to mention common descency. CAPS locking, and using derogitory language is almost always a sign of immaturity, something that is not often found in third year math majors.
and your point is saying that the first beagle being male has a definite effect on the second beagle? It cant. a third year math major would know that.
and your point is saying that the first beagle being male has a definite effect on the second beagle? It cant. a third year math major would know that.
thank you, i'm truly open to being swayed on this but just being a prick isn't the way to do it. Taxi driver almost had me on it but then I got caught up in the seymor and gained new vitality.LV Solace post=18.73797.809692 said:
Be that as it may, you're in the Escapist now.SeymourB post=18.73797.809708 said:
A glorious place full of magic and wonder and cheap whores.
However, those cheap whores come at a heavier effort to obtain.
As such, they like politeness, correct punctuality, and being a good forum goer.
You however are name calling and making a math molehill into a mountain AND not to mention you're threatening us and being a general jackass.
Now be gone, and do your probability homework you have been telling us about!
And I like LV's avatar, it's so cute.
sorry but i gave up reading after the top of page 2.
The problem i have with the question is that the woman doesn't know the sex of the dogs, so when they get the dogs back from the bather unless he gives them an identifier, she still isn't going to know which one he had picked out to confirm the male.
The problem i have with the question is that the woman doesn't know the sex of the dogs, so when they get the dogs back from the bather unless he gives them an identifier, she still isn't going to know which one he had picked out to confirm the male.
It's a badly worded problem, that's all. You could argue about it for days, but the point is, it wasn't clear enough to make you sure if it's 50% or 33%.
25% right?SeymourB post=18.73797.809708 said:
The reason this problem tricked me is because of the wording. It's not testing my abilities, it's testing if it can trick me or not.
I have no idea what some of your abbreviations meant, and the reason people are reporting you is because you're swearing like a sailor and generally trying to start a conflict.SeymourB post=18.73797.809708 said:
It's a 25% chance they both fail... If one already failed, it is 33%, assuming they were both tested to see if they would fail at the same time. If you actually made one, had it fail, and made another with the same 50% chance of failing, it would be 50% because it isn't a set, just two seperate coinflips.Shivari post=18.73797.809721 said:
I admit I haven't read all the replies but here goes. The first dog has no bearing on the second dog, basic math explains that to us. Now, on to the second dog. The dog can either be male or female giving it a 50/50 chance. It's like a coin or anything that has two options. I have a minor in math this question just seems silly....
See, it just seems like a stupid misplacement of words that isn't really important. I don't see how it makes a difference if you flip two coins across the room and look at one, or if you flip one and then flip another. The second is independent from the first, it's still 50%milskidasith post=18.73797.809735 said:
It's a stupid rule.
BUT, if we count the two coins as a set then it would be 33% right?milskidasith post=18.73797.809735 said:
It's like Shivari's saying, it's the damn wording of the problem. If the wording was correct, I might understand this a bit more, but it's a stupid trick question.
Hate trick-questions unless I'm the one telling them!
Nah, you get it. My examples were probably not that good, but in both examples the same principal - that knowing the value of one member of a set affects the probability spread of the other members' values - was the same as in the original problem. I was attempting to show (crudely) how this can be important for people other than engineers or mathematicians. If you randomly selected two mine sites and one struck copper, the chance for the second is that you randomly selected two winners, NOT the chance that any one mine will strike copper. Similarly, if you randomly select two fuel rods and one fails, the probability of the other failing is the probability that you randomly selected two defective fuel rods, NOT the chance of any individual fuel rod being defective. This sort of thing can be very important in engineering, although hopefully a critical component with a 50% failure rate will have more than one back-up. In any case, the probability function in question is the composition of the set you selected, not the probability function of each member's possible values.Jumplion post=18.73797.809688 said:
A more likely scenario would be a system with five widgets, each with a 5% defective rate. If at least three widgets must be in working order for proper operation and one widget is observed to fail, what is the chance two more widgets from the five randomly selected for the system will fail? Now imagine the system is a $300,000,000 satellite and a repair mission costs $25,000. Do you schedule a repair mission, or do you wait and hope more widgets don't fail? Variations of this kind of problem are reasonably common, and an incorrect understanding of probability and statistics can sink a company.
My point was that understanding set probability versus sequential probability is important for everyone, but it can be VERY important for some.
The same thing can be expanded to include coin tosses. If you toss two coins, you will have a distribution of possible results analogous to the pup gender question. The result of each coin toss is independent from the other. But the probability of the set of both coin tosses follows a rigid structure. Knowing one coin's result changes the probability of the other coin's result. As Dirtface said, it's the Monte Hall problem.
It's not a misplacement of words. The only trick is that your mind leaps ahead to what you THINK you know.Shivari post=18.73797.809752 said:
In anything - science or math or engineering or English literature or love or cooking - there are things you know and things you don't know. Knowing what you know is even more important than knowing what you don't know because what you don't know MAY cause a wrong result, but not knowing (i.e. not recognizing) what you do know means you can't act upon that information, which practically guarantees a wrong result. Learning to recognize and correctly interpret what you know, or at least what you can know if you can recognize it, is absolutely vital for success in anything.
In any endeavor, learning to recognize and correctly incorporate what you know is the basis for sound work. Everyone here should make absolutely sure he or she understands this problem AND understands why natural human inclination is wrong in this case. How many times in life do you look back and slap your forehead, saying "How can I have been so stupid? It was all right in front of me. I knew he couldn't be trusted. I knew that answer was wrong. I knew that wasn't going to work."
I highlighted the important part of the rules for you, they are as follows:SeymourB post=18.73797.809725 said:
Here's the deal. You disagree, we disagree, and we're done with it. That's how it could work, but instead, you've endeavored to berate us for posting just to get the last word in when you yourself are posting to get the last word in.Joe post=18.50824.348635 said:
Here's the deal, you're making a bigger deal out of this than there really should be. How about we all drop it, and continue with the mathematical problem like this thread is really all about.
The problem doesn't provide enough information to assess the situation. If both beagles are from the same mother, the chance is 33%, if they are from different mothers, it is 50%, if the question is calling for whether or not they're male, female, or both male, then the percentage is 33%.Fud post=18.73797.809286 said:
Which specifically, isn't identifiable, therefore I voted with the option that had the most possible answers, which is 33%.
They're not tricks: they're tests of whether you can determine from the information you're given specifically what kind of statistics problem you have on your hands. Real world stats problems won't kindly tell you what probability distribution you should use, for instance - poisson, normal, binomial, exponential, etc. Half of what you're taught in (good) probs and stats classes is what elements you should look for in any given problem to find the solution method before you find the answer. If, to return to probability distributions, you're told that you're looking at a continuous set of variables (as in the numbers are not discrete - there are no jumps in value, so, say, every whole number) you know that poisson and binomial distributions are immediately off the table.Shivari post=18.73797.809797 said:
What else are you told, though? Are we mapping population growth? Then it's exponential distribution you want. Now kindly start using the equations we've given you for exponential probability distributions.
My Year 12 Probs and Stats unit was practically made on these "trick" questions. You were given a written explanation of the problem, but not told what type of problem it was; if you couldn't figure that out then you didn't know the subject anyway, and didn't deserve the marks.
Edit: I see this post was already replied to. My bad.
Edit 2: You're all wrong; it's 33.333 recurring. So there.