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Kawoomba comments on Rationality Quotes from people associated with LessWrong - Less Wrong Discussion

24 Post author: ChristianKl 29 July 2013 01:19PM

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Comment author: Kawoomba 30 July 2013 09:55:30AM 1 point [-]

in a series (one single, continuing series!) of coin tosses, the probability that you get a run of heads at least half as long as the overall length of the series (eg ttththtHHHHHHH) is always >0, but it is not guaranteed to happen, no matter how many chances you give it.

... any event for which you don't change the epsilon such that the sum becomes a convergent series. Or any process with a Markov property. Or any event with a fixed epsilon >0.

That should cover round about any relevant event.

(and also you mis-apply the Law of large Numbers here)

Explain.

Comment author: BT_Uytya 31 July 2013 06:58:40AM 4 points [-]

Law of Large Numbers states that sum of a large amount of i.i.d variables approaches its mathematical expectation. Roughly speaking, "big samples reliably reveal properties of population".

It doesn't state that "everything can happen in large samples".

Comment author: Kawoomba 31 July 2013 08:15:25AM 1 point [-]

Thanks. Memory is more fragile than thought, wrong folder. Updated.