Threadjacking!

[Frank]

I think I've got my head around the Monty Hall problem, but I'm not sure I'll be able to explain how it works in the morning. Marcus du Sautoy does his best here.

[TordelBack]

I think I've got my head around the Monty Hall problem...

In my day the term 'Monty Hall problem' was co-opted to describe a particularly dull form of Dungeons & Dragons.

[M.I.K.]

I think I've got my head around the Monty Hall problem, but I'm not sure I'll be able to explain how it works in the morning. Marcus du Sautoy does his best here.

But surely if one of the three choices is revealed and you can no longer choose it, then that automatically takes it out of the equation and you're only left with two choices, meaning that it is a 50% chance of choosing the right one?

[TordelBack]

Only if you consider the two stages to be separate games, which they aren't, because the host always picks a goat door after you have picked your door.  There was a 66% chance you picked a goat, and there still is.

[Goaty]

I get picked a lot, so I must be popular!

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

It's like deal or no deal, it's just random chance. It's a game that is so well designed, it can't be gamed. It's the illusion of choice, and just like the theme of the plots of The Matrix sequels, it's meaningless.

[M.I.K.]

Only if you consider the two stages to be separate games, which they aren't, because the host always picks a goat door after you have picked your door.  There was a 66% chance you picked a goat, and there still is.

Yeah, I think I've got it, but now I can't shift the niggling idea the universe might just be really badly programmed.

[TordelBack]

... I can't shift the niggling idea the universe might just be really badly programmed.

Too right.  I'm reading Brian "he's so dreamy" Cox and Jeff Forshaw's Quantum universe: everything that can happen does happen at the moment, and after I've banged my head off the maths for a bit my chapter-by-chapter conclusion is that the whole bloody mess is completely insane.

[shaolin_monkey]

Whatever happened to augmented reality, eh? I want more, lots more, and in 3D please.

[Tiplodocus]

Aaargh! probability and Staistics

http://xkcd.com/1132/

[Hawkmumbler]

Whatever happened to augmented reality, eh? I want more, lots more, and in 3D please.

Oculus Rift. Nuff' said.

[Dandontdare]

Aaargh! probability and Statistics

http://xkcd.com/1132/

I love that strip - thanks for reminding me to catch up on it. Some of the computer-geek stuff goes over my head, but this one really made me laugh: http://xkcd.com/1016/

[TordelBack]

Limmy's twitter feed (@DaftLimmy) is frequently hilarious, but he seems to attract almost as many point-missing morons as Dawkins.  Almost.

[The Doctor Alt 8]

NASA photobombed by Frog.

Someone will claim that it is proof of aliens...

[TordelBack]

My dream date Mary Beard has interesting things to say about Twitter:  http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2013/09/why-tweet.html

I'm a Twitter noob, and I don't really tweet myself, but I have read more interesting articles courtesy of the feeds of folk like Mary than I have at any time since I first used a VT100 terminal to a college VAX machine back in 1990 to get the heads-up on upcoming 3rd Season episodes of Next Generation from STREK-L.  It's been a genuinely educational tool for me, with the side benefit of a stream of very funny people trotting out epigrams in between the insights.