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Author Topic: Maths Question  (Read 7026 times)
Jon MW
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« Reply #15 on: January 15, 2012, 05:06:00 PM »

Nope. Too many other factors for that to be 50/50.

like what?
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mulhuzz
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« Reply #16 on: January 15, 2012, 05:20:46 PM »

Nope. Too many other factors for that to be 50/50.

one suspects you could take a Chernoff bound to determine which side is biased and then take a decent sample based on that bias....although I'm probably overegging it for a random question on a poker forum? Cheesy
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gatso
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« Reply #17 on: January 15, 2012, 05:48:01 PM »

write a number on it using a pen, maybe a green one. then ask someone to guess whether it's an odd or an even number. they'll probs get it right about 50% of the time
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doubleup
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« Reply #18 on: January 15, 2012, 06:08:26 PM »

write a number on it using a pen, maybe a green one. then ask someone to guess whether it's an odd or an even number. they'll probs get it right about 50% of the time

the date on the coin could be odd or even, so you wouldn't need to spend the coin to buy a green pen
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mulhuzz
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« Reply #19 on: January 15, 2012, 06:28:44 PM »

Nope. Too many other factors for that to be 50/50.

one suspects you could take a Chernoff bound to determine which side is biased and then take a decent sample based on that bias....although I'm probably overegging it for a random question on a poker forum? Cheesy

confirmed overegged it. sigh.
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gatso
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« Reply #20 on: January 15, 2012, 06:45:46 PM »

I figured the date thing would be biased to the last full year as there'd be more in circulation
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EvilPie
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« Reply #21 on: January 15, 2012, 06:50:41 PM »

Rather than flip the coin just take it out of your pocket and place it on a table.

Assuming you don't know which way the bias works I'm pretty sure that'd be 50/50.
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gatso
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« Reply #22 on: January 15, 2012, 07:08:31 PM »

Or we could just flip it and call heads or tails. As we don't know what way it's biased it's still 50/50 whether we get it right or not
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AndrewT
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« Reply #23 on: January 15, 2012, 07:27:30 PM »

Take the coin and throw it at cf's head. You'll either hit him or you won't - 50/50.
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mulhuzz
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« Reply #24 on: January 15, 2012, 07:27:51 PM »

Or we could just flip it and call heads or tails. As we don't know what way it's biased it's still 50/50 whether we get it right or not

nah - what if the coin is 100% biased?
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gatso
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« Reply #25 on: January 15, 2012, 07:31:49 PM »

Or we could just flip it and call heads or tails. As we don't know what way it's biased it's still 50/50 whether we get it right or not

nah - what if the coin is 100% biased?

Even if it's double headed/tailed we're still 50/50 to get it right if we don't know which one. Ignorance ftw
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mulhuzz
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« Reply #26 on: January 15, 2012, 07:35:36 PM »

ok, say 90% it's heads and 10% it's tails.

we pick heads 50% and tails 50% over 100 trials (assume no variance and that 100 is a big enough number to make results match expectation perfectly)

when we pick tails, we're never right 50% of the time....
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gatso
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« Reply #27 on: January 15, 2012, 07:50:06 PM »

agreed but I'm only talking about a one off single flip

question asked 'How can we use this coin to get a genuine 50/50 chance?' and that's what we'd get once
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« Reply #28 on: January 15, 2012, 08:30:59 PM »

agreed but I'm only talking about a one off single flip

question asked 'How can we use this coin to get a genuine 50/50 chance?' and that's what we'd get once

Nope. You're making an assumption that neither person knows about the bias, and this might not always be the case.

The correct answer will always work, no matter the bias (as long as it's not doublesided/100% of course).
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doubleup
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« Reply #29 on: January 15, 2012, 08:51:13 PM »


Nope. You're making an assumption that neither person knows about the bias, and this might not always be the case.



We don't know which side, nor do we know the size of the bias. How can we use this coin to get a genuine 50/50 chance?

So that was the royal we and not a co-operative effort from a pair of tossers?
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