Political maths

[Gob]

As to the flag - the word "Meade" followed by "Bullshit" should be a fairly clear communication I would have thought.

Surely that's a tautology?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Well it used to be taut but you know, gravity and all that. (Not that I necessarily concur with gravity)

[Lord Jim]

Surely that's a tautology?

Actually, I believe the word you're looking for there is "redundancy"....

[MajGenl.Meade]

Oddly in South Africa that's called "redeployed". I.E. today a job; tomorrow no job. Weird

[rubato]

Could it be that Labour leader Ed Miliband's demand that all school pupils must study maths until they are 18 has been prompted by new evidence that his own MPs struggle with numbers?



The man in charge of the party's policy review, Jon Cruddas, admitted this weekend that he is "barely numerate". And when the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) recently tested the ability of honourable members to answer a relatively simple mathematical question, only a quarter of Labour MPs got it right.

A total of 97 MPs were asked this probability problem: if you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?*

Among Conservative members, 47% gave the wrong answer, which is disappointing enough. But of the 44 Labour MPs who took part, 77% answered incorrectly.

(*The correct response, of course, is 25%.)

Wow, that's really disappointing.

One of the most important questions when dealing with probabilistic outcomes is knowing that if the events are truly random the outcome of the first coin toss has no effect on the second.

Although the mis-perception is very common that if a flipped coin comes up heads 2, 3, 4, or 5 times in a row that the probability changes that the next one will be tails. ( a fact put to very rich use by casinos everywhere).


yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

I just flipped a coin. I don't know whether it landed heads or tails. What are the odds that it landed heads?

[Econoline]

50%

I just flipped another coin. What are the odds that that one landed heads?

Right!

So now.....what are the odds that both Andrew's coin and my coin landed heads?

[Gob]

An orange one.

[Sue U]

Will this tell us whether that poor cat in the box is still alive?

[Big RR]

The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box. Of course you have to open it at least nine times to be sure it is finally dead.

[MajGenl.Meade]

So the first time, there's only an 11.1r chance that it's dead?