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Paradoxes of Probability and Other Statistical Strangeness

181 pointsby robocaptainalmost 8 years ago

6 comments

boreasalmost 8 years ago
For those who might be interested, and in a slightly different vein than the examples in the article, there&#x27;s the &quot;sleeping beauty&quot; paradox: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sleeping_Beauty_problem" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sleeping_Beauty_problem</a><p>Basically, an agent is put to sleep and told they will be woken up once or twice, depending on the results of a fair coin flip, without the ability to remember other awakenings.<p>What probability does the agent assign to the event that the coin landed heads?<p>The intuitive response is 1&#x2F;3, but this poses obvious epistemological problems. The agent has, ostensibly, no new information at all, and their prior is surely 1&#x2F;2. Hope someone else finds this as interesting as I do!
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Houshalteralmost 8 years ago
By far the most unintuitive paradox for me personally is the one presented here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;go3xtDdsNQM?t=3m27s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;go3xtDdsNQM?t=3m27s</a><p>&quot;Mr. Jones has 2 children. What is the probability he has a girl if he has a boy born on Tuesday?&quot; Somehow knowing the day of the week the boy was born changes the result. It&#x27;s completely bizarre.
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georgewsingeralmost 8 years ago
Another &quot;paradox&quot;: even though it&#x27;s possible to randomly pick a rational number from the reals, the probability of this happening is 0.
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fitchjoalmost 8 years ago
My favorite statistical&#x2F;probability paradox has always been the birthday paradox.
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pellaalmost 8 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Category:Statistical_paradoxes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Category:Statistical_paradoxes</a>
daxfohlalmost 8 years ago
&quot;Paradox&quot; is a pretty strong term. The items presented are more in the category of common errors and counter-intuitiveness.
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