27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Redundancy of English language is a Goldilocks zone for C...
In Shannon’s terms, the feature of messages that makes codecracking possible is redundancy. A historian of cryptography, David Kahn, explained it like this: “Roughly, redundancy means that more symbols are transmitted in a message than are actually needed to bear the information.” Information resolves our uncertainty; redundancy is every part of a message that tells us nothing new. Whenever we can guess what comes next, we’re in the presence of redundancy. Letters can be redundant: be... 1 
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notes27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Redundancy in the English Language
Whenever we communicate, rules everywhere restrict our freedom to choose the next letter and the next pineapple.I Because these rules render certain patterns more likely and certain patterns almost impossible, languages like English come well short of complete uncertainty and maximal information: the sequence “th” has already occurred 6,431 times in this book, the sequence “tk” just this once. From the perspective of the information theorist, our languages are hugely predictable— al... 1 notes
notesMonte Carlo method for building words and sentences.
12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Level Two Chaos
Level two chaos is chaos that reacts to predictions about it, and therefore can never be predicted accurately. Markets, for example, are a level two chaotic system. What will happen if we develop a computer program that forecasts with 100 per cent accuracy the price of oil tomorrow? The price of oil will immediately react to the forecast, which would consequently fail to materialise. If the current price of oil is $90 a barrel, and the infallible computer program predicts that tomorrow it wil...Folksonomies: chaos probability
Folksonomies: chaos probability
1 notes
notes25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Buddhini Samarasinghe: Scientists Should Stick to Science
It is a statistical fact that you are more likely to die while horseback riding (1 serious adverse event every ~350 exposures) than from taking Ecstasy (1 serious adverse event every ~10,000 exposures). Yet, in 2009, the scientist who said this was fired from his position as the chairman of the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Professor David Nutt's remit was to make scientific recommendations to government ministers on the classification of illegal drugs based on the harm they c... 1 notes
notes30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
PETWHAC
PETWHAC stands for Population of Events That Would Have
Appeared Coincidental. Population may seem an odd word, but it is the
correct statistical term. I won't keep using capital letters because they
stand so unattractively on the page. Somebody's watch stopping within
ten seconds of the psychic's incantation obviously belongs within the
petwhac, but so do many other events. Strictly speaking, the grandfather
clock's stopping should not be included. The mystic did not claim that he
could stop... 1 notes
notes30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Fortune of Conception
Moralists and theologians place great weight upon the moment of
conception, seeing it as the instant at which the soul comes into
existence. If, like me, you are unmoved by such talk, you still must regard a particular instant, nine months before your birth, as the most
decisive event in your personal fortunes. It is the moment at which your
consciousness suddenly became trillions of times more foreseeable than
it was a split second before. To be sure, the embryonic you that came
into existen... 1 notes
notes24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Many Factors Combine to Allow Life on Earth
As we look at planet Earth and the factors that enabled us to be here, we quickly realize that our planet is very special. Here’s a short list: the long-term existence of a protective and oxygen-rich atmosphere; Earth’s axial tilt, stabilized by a single large moon; the ozone layer and the magnetic field, which jointly protect surface creatures from lethal cosmic radiation; plate tectonics, which regulates the levels of carbon dioxide and keeps the global temperature stable; the fact that...
1 Marcelo Gleiser's argument that the many favorable factors that produce life on Earth mean life could be very rare in the Universe.
24 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Card Trick Involving Chance
A good card magician knows many tricks that depend on luck—they don’t always work, or even often work. There are some effects—they can hardly be called tricks—that might work only once in a thousand times! Here is what you do: You start by telling the audience you are going to perform a trick, and without telling them what trick you are doing, you go for the one-in-a-thousand effect. It almost never works, of course, so you glide seamlessly into a second try—for an effect that works... 1 notes
notesThe idea is to rely on probability, have several tricks where the odds get better and better until p=1.
25 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Nature is Intrinsically Probabilistic
Here are the circumstances: source, strong light source; tell me, behind which hole will I see the electron? You say, 'Well, the reason you can't tell through which hole you're going to see the electron is, it's determined by some very complicated things back here: if I knew enough about that electron - it has internal wheels, internal gears, and so forth - and that this is what determines through which hole it goes. It's 50/50 probability because, like a die, it's set sort of at random - and...Folksonomies: quantum physics probability
Folksonomies: quantum physics probability
1 notes
notesThe light as a particle/wave duality make it impossible to predict where an electron will emerge in an experiment.
13 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Gary Gygax Explains Dice
As the DM, the tools of your trade are dice — platonic solid-shaped or just about any other sort. The random numbers you generate by rblling dice determine the results based on the probabilities determined herein or those you have set forth on your own. In case you are not familiar with probability curves, there are two types which are determined by your dice: linear (straight line),'which has equal probability of any given integer in the number group, and bell (ascending and descending lin... 1 notes
notesProbability, percentages, averages, there's a lot of math in this introduction to the most important tool of the gamer.
What does it mean that the average role of a 1d6 is 3.5 but the probability of any number coming up is 16.7?
