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Coincidence

To give a better idea of what I meant by "coincidences", here's a list of numbers I wrote down towards the end of yesterday, and why they were remarkable.

547404 (the number 4 every other digit)
547433 (last two numbers the same)
547457 (first three digits an anagram of last three digits)
547478 (repitition of 47)
547488 (last two numbers the same)

Amazingly, in an email to me yesterday, someone quoted record number 545474 which, like my first example, has the number 4 every other digit. Then, quite without me realising, I later saw that I'd written this list on a page of my notepad where I'd already written 531513 (another anagrammic number). And then today my first record was number 547711 (two double digits) and I discovered that for some reason the system had deleted no. 547533 (ends in two digits).

All of this is nonsensical, of course. I've no pre-existing criteria for deciding which numbers are important. I go by aesthetic coincidences which are pretty meaningless. But if I were to attach it to something mystical such as the position of the stars or ley lines, I reckon I could make some money.

ETA: I only process about twenty to fifty records a day. I can only assume my work isn't anything like Rasmus'!
 
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Rasmus said:
Huntsman wrote: "And, oddly enough, the chances of one per floor are the same as the chances of everyone getting off at 10, or of 3 getting off at 2, 4 getting off at 6, and the rest at 10."

Excellent example.
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No, incorrect example. I've demonstrated that, using the simplification of the binomial distribution (which, assuming that the number of people who work on each Floor, 2-11, in Huntsman's building is approximately the same, is a close approximation of the exact odds), the chances of one person getting off on each Floor, 2-11, with the conditions specified by Huntsman, is about 1 in 2800. On the other hand, the random odds of everyone getting off at Huntsman's Floor 10 is approximately one in 10 to the ninth power, or one in one billion. Why? Because for each elevator rider, the odds of him/her getting off on Floor 10 is about one in 10, and there are nine riders (other than Huntsman, who knows that he is getting off on Floor 10). What you're missing is that -- all things being equal -- there is a low probability of a given rider getting off on a given floor, and so the odds of all nine riders getting off on the same floor are extremely low. On the other hand, each rider has to get off on some floor, and there are a vast number of ways they can do that if they get off on several different floors. However, the "all things being equal" disclaimer is important because often two or more people from the same floor will ride the elevator together. That's another reason why I think Huntsman's example is a particularly good coincidence, but still not as good as a random situation where nine other riders all get off on Huntsman's Floor 10.
 
Rodney said:
No, incorrect example. I've demonstrated that, using the simplification of the binomial distribution (which, assuming that the number of people who work on each Floor, 2-11, in Huntsman's building is approximately the same, is a close approximation of the exact odds), the chances of one person getting off on each Floor, 2-11, with the conditions specified by Huntsman, is about 1 in 2800.
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That doesn't make the example any worse. On the contrary, it makes it better, since most people wouldn't estimate the chances to be as good as they actually are.


That's another reason why I think Huntsman's example is a particularly good coincidence, but still not as good as a random situation where nine other riders all get off on Huntsman's Floor 10.
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Right, it is certainly not random - but then, what is? Very few things happen randomly.
 
What Rasmus said :)

That was pretty much the point of my anecdote. Most people don't understand how probability is calculated, and they overestimate the odds of something happening, especially if whatever happened is something that has some sort of special meaning (like one person per floor, or a number sequence like 1,2,3,4, or something similar).
 
I've experienced so many coincidences in my life, it's surprising I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool woo.

Many years ago, I used to manage video rental stores. We had several TV's suspended from the ceiling, where we'd keep a movie running (with no sound), and a classic rock station on the speakers.

One day I popped in Twilight Zone: The Movie and went about my work. A few minutes later, I noticed Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio playing "The Midnight Special", looked up to the screen, and noticed it was the very part in the movie where Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks were singing that same song.

WOO!

Another time, before my ex-wife and I were married, we were on a camping trip about a four hour drive from home. There's a famous hotel near where we were, with a beautiful patio overlooking the Grand River (pictured), and we went there for a beer.

From across the room I heard my name called. The guy didn't look familiar, but he introduced himself as my former next-door neighbour, and the name rang a bell. When I was younger there was family next door with that name.
I asked after his mother and sisters, and they were well. He asked after my parents as well.

But then he asked after my sister. "You mean Don, my brother," I answered.

Turned out, I looked exactly like his former neighbour with the same first name. From a completely different city. And he shared the same family name as my former neighbours.

WOO WOO!
The third was after my ex and I were married. We were camping again, with her friends. (see map). There's a nice, lazy river that runs through the campgrounds, just perfect for taking a float on a truck inner-tube. The campground had an old schoolbus that would drive around the site and ferry people to the place from where you'd start 'tubing'.

One morning I was enjoying my breakfast caesar in my campchair. The bus pulled up, and a crowd disembarked.

There stood six of my friends, looking at me like I had three eyes, or something.

TRIPLE WOO!

Strange occurrences, yes. Coincidence, of course. Synchronicity? A Police song.
 
Rodney said:
No, incorrect example. I've demonstrated that, using the simplification of the binomial distribution (which, assuming that the number of people who work on each Floor, 2-11, in Huntsman's building is approximately the same, is a close approximation of the exact odds), the chances of one person getting off on each Floor, 2-11, with the conditions specified by Huntsman, is about 1 in 2800. On the other hand, the random odds of everyone getting off at Huntsman's Floor 10 is approximately one in 10 to the ninth power, or one in one billion. Why? Because for each elevator rider, the odds of him/her getting off on Floor 10 is about one in 10, and there are nine riders (other than Huntsman, who knows that he is getting off on Floor 10). What you're missing is that -- all things being equal -- there is a low probability of a given rider getting off on a given floor, and so the odds of all nine riders getting off on the same floor are extremely low. On the other hand, each rider has to get off on some floor, and there are a vast number of ways they can do that if they get off on several different floors. However, the "all things being equal" disclaimer is important because often two or more people from the same floor will ride the elevator together. That's another reason why I think Huntsman's example is a particularly good coincidence, but still not as good as a random situation where nine other riders all get off on Huntsman's Floor 10.
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There's a simple way of thinking of this. Because there are ten possibilities , each person can have a floor from 0 to 9. Ten people. That makes a decimal number ten digits long.
The fallacy in the first argument was to assume that the likelihood of people getting off one per floor was the same as the likelihood of picking the number 0123456789 from a possible 999999999 choices. But that's only the case if the people get off in a particular order. For the case cited, 8123476590 is also a valid number. and 1234567890.

It's further complicated by knowing in advance that one person gets off at floor ten, and also that presumably if someone else was going to get off there, the first person would recognise them and be talking to them about cricket instead of noticing coincidences.
 
A funny World Cup coincidence tonight:

We were watching the England v Sweden game, and my hubby was pointing out to me one of the Swedish players (who used to play for Aston Villa). We had recently seen this player in an electrical goods shop in a posh area of Birmingham, which was apparently quite exciting if you like that sort of thing. The shop was called Apollo 2000. As my hubby said "2000", the player scored the 2000th goal in World Cup history.

Probably not so neat to non-soccer folk and England fans :D
 
Huntsman said:
What Rasmus said :)

That was pretty much the point of my anecdote. Most people don't understand how probability is calculated, and they overestimate the odds of something happening, especially if whatever happened is something that has some sort of special meaning (like one person per floor, or a number sequence like 1,2,3,4, or something similar).
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Thats's true of most believers, but not true about most skeptics, who tend to underestimate the odds of things happening, such as the creation of life. For example, on -- http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html -- Ian Musgrave states:

"However, there is another side to these probability estimates, and it
hinges on the fact that most of us don't have a feeling for statistics.
When someone tells us that some event has a one in a million chance
of occuring, many of us expect that one million trials must be undergone
before the said event turns up, but this is wrong.

"Here is a experiment you can do yourself: take a coin, flip it four
times, write down the results, and then do it again. How many times
would you think you had to repeat this procedure (trial) before you
get 4 heads in a row?

"Now the probability of 4 heads in a row is is (1/2)^4 or 1 chance in
16: do we have to do 16 trials to get 4 heads (HHHH)? No, in
successive experiments I got 11, 10, 6, 16, 1, 5, and 3 trials before
HHHH turned up. The figure 1 in 16 (or 1 in a million or 1 in 10^40)
gives the likelihood of an event in a given trial, but doesn't say
where it will occur in a series. You can flip HHHH on your very first
trial (I did). Even at 1 chance in 4.29 x 10^40, a self-replicator
could have turned up surprisingly early."

Actually, no, barring a staggeringly unlikely occurrence. While, when the probability of success is relatively high, as Musgrave states: "You can flip HHHH on your very first trial", there is virtually no chance at odds of 1 in 4.29 x 10^40 of success even after 4.29 octillion (4.29 x 10^27) trials. Rather, to get to just a 0.1% chance of success, more than 4.29 x 10^37 trials would be necessary.

Musgrave's discussion of probability is also misleading in that it fosters the notion that the number of trials needed will almost always be significantly less than what most people would expect. While it is true, for example, that, on average, an event that has a one in a million chance of occurring will occur before one million trials have taken place, it is also true that there is about a 37% chance that the event will not have occurred after one million trials have taken place and a 13.5% chance that the event will not have occurred even after two million trials have taken place.

So Musgrave seems to think that life coming into existence through random chance was inevitable, when it was anything but.
 
BillyJoe said:
How many people would you have to meet before there is a 50/50 chance that two will have the same birthdate. The answer is 23 people (and, if you can be out by one day, the number is 14 people!). Doesn't sound right does it? You would think that it would be something more like 600 people.
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Only if you're reeeeeeeally bad at math. :D
 
aerosolben said:
Only if you're reeeeeeeally bad at math. :D
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Direct quote from my *ex*-girlfriend:
"There was this like other girl at work today and she's got the same birthday as me. The odds against that must be, like, a thousand to one"
 
moopet said:
Direct quote from my *ex*-girlfriend:
"There was this like other girl at work today and she's got the same birthday as me. The odds against that must be, like, a thousand to one"
Click to expand...
Of course, it it was the same year, too......

Hans
 
Rodney said:
Thats's true of most believers, but not true about most skeptics, who tend to underestimate the odds of things happening, such as the creation of life. For example, on -- http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html -- Ian Musgrave states:

"However, there is another side to these probability estimates, and it
hinges on the fact that most of us don't have a feeling for statistics.
When someone tells us that some event has a one in a million chance
of occuring, many of us expect that one million trials must be undergone
before the said event turns up, but this is wrong.

"Here is a experiment you can do yourself: take a coin, flip it four
times, write down the results, and then do it again. How many times
would you think you had to repeat this procedure (trial) before you
get 4 heads in a row?

"Now the probability of 4 heads in a row is is (1/2)^4 or 1 chance in
16: do we have to do 16 trials to get 4 heads (HHHH)? No, in
successive experiments I got 11, 10, 6, 16, 1, 5, and 3 trials before
HHHH turned up. The figure 1 in 16 (or 1 in a million or 1 in 10^40)
gives the likelihood of an event in a given trial, but doesn't say
where it will occur in a series. You can flip HHHH on your very first
trial (I did). Even at 1 chance in 4.29 x 10^40, a self-replicator
could have turned up surprisingly early."

Actually, no, barring a staggeringly unlikely occurrence. While, when the probability of success is relatively high, as Musgrave states: "You can flip HHHH on your very first trial", there is virtually no chance at odds of 1 in 4.29 x 10^40 of success even after 4.29 octillion (4.29 x 10^27) trials. Rather, to get to just a 0.1% chance of success, more than 4.29 x 10^37 trials would be necessary.

Musgrave's discussion of probability is also misleading in that it fosters the notion that the number of trials needed will almost always be significantly less than what most people would expect. While it is true, for example, that, on average, an event that has a one in a million chance of occurring will occur before one million trials have taken place, it is also true that there is about a 37% chance that the event will not have occurred after one million trials have taken place and a 13.5% chance that the event will not have occurred even after two million trials have taken place.

So Musgrave seems to think that life coming into existence through random chance was inevitable, when it was anything but.
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I'm not going to spend much time on this, because there is SO much more to that probability calculation than what you've posted. I'll just touch a few areas.

IN any case, the principle is sound. It could have happened the first time (although it is highly unlikely). Another thing to consider is that there were likely well over two million chemical reactions happening at any given time. Even restricting it to lightning strikes (a common theory), there are over 100 lightning strikes on the Earth each second. That's over eight and a half million poer day. Even if we assume only 10% of these impacted in areas that contained organic atomic componenets (hydrogen, carbon, etc), and if we assume that the rate of lightning was only 10% what it is today, we end up with an 86.5% of life creation after 100 days, using your own calculations.

So yeah, with the conditions we had, life was pretty darn close to inevitable. The chance of nothign occuring at all is, likely, less than the chance of it happening on the first try.
 
moopet said:
Direct quote from my *ex*-girlfriend:
"There was this like other girl at work today and she's got the same birthday as me. The odds against that must be, like, a thousand to one"
Click to expand...
As Terry Pratchett says, "Million-to-one chances come through nine times out of ten."
 
Huntsman said:
So yeah, with the conditions we had, life was pretty darn close to inevitable. The chance of nothign occuring at all is, likely, less than the chance of it happening on the first try.
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Do you ever wonder why, if what you're saying is true, life from non-life has never been created in a laboratory?
 
Rodney said:
Do you ever wonder why, if what you're saying is true, life from non-life has never been created in a laboratory?
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Because we can't produce lightning in a lab (not anything close to the real thing), and especially not at 100 times a second, with a planet-full of material to work with.

We have produced organic compounds, and some of the precursers to life. But considering the research in this area is fairly new, no, I haven't wondered that we can't create it in a lab.

That's pretty much a non-argument.

Have you ever wondered why we can't make a supernova in the lab? Well, astronomy must be wrong.

Have you ever wondered why we can't make a black hole in the lab? Well, psychics is out.

Have you ever wondered why we can't make an earthquake in the lab? So much for geology.

Have you ever wondered why we can't make a volcano in the lab? So much for vulcanology.

Have you ever wondered why you can't actually makea logical argument, but can only insinuate that others are wrong, while providing no countering facts or evidence? Well, you don't think clearly.

:D

Note for Readers: One of the things in this list is not like the others...can you spot which one?
 
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