Re: Coincidence
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 10:31 pm
Can confirm.
A group for contestants and lovers of the Channel 4 game show 'Countdown'.
http://c4countdown.co.uk/
Then on Saturday 17th September, qualifying for the Singapore GP happened, and Daniel Ricciardo outqualified Max Verstappen by 0.213 seconds. This is already fucking amazing, right? But that's not it. On the Autosport forum, Pyrone89 posted this:when I'm watching F1 motor racing, the commentators might say that someone has done a lap within 0.2 seconds of someone else. And by that, they don't mean just anywhere between 0 and 0.2 seconds - they mean 0.2 seconds slower. And it might even be rounded down to 0.2 (the exact gap might be e.g. 0.213 seconds), so it's not actually within 0.2 seconds at all!
Which was followed by this by RPM40:Good lap by RIC, average by Verstappen (but still within 2 tenths in a car that didn't suit him).
If there was a Nobel prize for coincidences, this one would win hands down.Verstappen wasn't within 2 tenths. The gap was 0.213.
Fred Mumford wrote:I was certainly impressed, although when you think about it the chance of a 0.213 gap between any 2 drivers isn't all that unlikely I suppose. Also, given that the average IQ on that forum is approximately 100 lower than this one (assuming Steven M McCann is no longer a member here), the chances of somebody claiming that 0.213 is within 0.2 are very high indeed.
Well, I don't think it's exactly confirmation bias - although maybe something along similar lines where you only notice certain things, and I was more likely to notice those forum posts having posted what I just did.JimBentley wrote:Not just a bit of this then? Combine that with the coincidence and there you have it.
I wonder what the biggest coincidence ever could be (not that I intend to disparage the rest of your post of course)? What if a woman (who had already had one or more kids) had a sex change and then went on unwittingly to impregnate one of his kids as a man, but then deliberately had another kid with his own child (in an incest-type scenario)? That's got to be pretty long odds, but I'm sure you lot can beat it, you degenerate scum.Gavin Chipper wrote:This was the biggest coincidence ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d4wPaBNryAJimBentley wrote:I wonder what the biggest coincidence ever could beGavin Chipper wrote:This was the biggest coincidence ever.
I'm not sure I follow, particularly the bit in bold. How do you accidentally impregnate one of your kids without it being an incest-type scenario?JimBentley wrote:I wonder what the biggest coincidence ever could be (not that I intend to disparage the rest of your post of course)? What if a woman (who had already had one or more kids) had a sex change and then went on unwittingly to impregnate one of his kids as a man, but then deliberately had another kid with his own child (in an incest-type scenario)? That's got to be pretty long odds, but I'm sure you lot can beat it, you degenerate scum.Gavin Chipper wrote:This was the biggest coincidence ever.
Sometimes I wonder if you could get a number (like pi or something but not necessarily pi) that should be irrational, but somehow ends up as rational by some sort of infinite coincidence. So instead of all the decimal places being like 458572101832907540932, after a certain point it just recurs, or basically ends and goes 00000000000000 forever. The numbers are still all effectively "random", but they're all 0.JimBentley wrote:I wonder what the biggest coincidence ever could beGavin Chipper wrote:This was the biggest coincidence ever.
JimBentley wrote:...What if a woman (who had already had one or more kids) had a sex change and then went on unwittingly to impregnate one of his kids as a man, but then had another kid with his own child (in an incest-type scenario)?
I imagine that all the parties involved had received some sort of plastic surgery (beyond the sex changes and all that) and would have lost touch with one another, possibly as a result of their insane plastic surgery fetishes. So as they wouldn't recognise one another when they met. I think might make it work.Gavin Chipper wrote:I'm not sure I follow, particularly the bit in bold. How do you accidentally impregnate one of your kids without it being an incest-type scenario?
I suspect a number like that would fail to fit the definition of irrational.Gavin Chipper wrote:Sometimes I wonder if you could get a number (like pi or something but not necessarily pi) that should be irrational, but somehow ends up as rational by some sort of infinite coincidence. So instead of all the decimal places being like 458572101832907540932, after a certain point it just recurs, or basically ends and goes 00000000000000 forever. The numbers are still all effectively "random", but they're all 0.JimBentley wrote:I wonder what the biggest coincidence ever could beGavin Chipper wrote:This was the biggest coincidence ever.
That was interesting, cheers for that, man.Gavin Chipper wrote:This page about mathematical coincidences is quite interesting.
I've only seen a few episodes of Seinfeld so I hadn't seen that previously. But then yesterday (less than 24 hours after you posted that), I went round my friend's flat and we watched a few episodes. And that episode came up!Mark James wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d4wPaBNryAJimBentley wrote:I wonder what the biggest coincidence ever could beGavin Chipper wrote:This was the biggest coincidence ever.
Aw, now you've made me want to watch them all again, but I've only got them on video and haven't got a working video player anymore.Gavin Chipper wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d4wPaBNryA
I think the obvious thing to do is for you to send me your DVD/VCR combo thing and I'll send you a working DVD player. Everyone wins! Especially the parcel carriers.Mark James wrote:I have all the episodes on dvd and I have a dvd/vcr combo thing but the dvd tray mechanism is broken and won't open but the vcr is fine. So both of us have the means to watch each others copies but neither of us can watch our own. Coincidence?
Yep. Referring to the digits of a number as "random" is just a figure of speech, so shouldn't be confused with the other sense of random (i.e. unpredictable). If you could prove that the number in question was subject to this "infinite coincidence" then you would've proved that it's rational. So the statement "should be irrational" doesn't make much sense.Ian Volante wrote:I suspect a number like that would fail to fit the definition of irrational.Gavin Chipper wrote: Sometimes I wonder if you could get a number (like pi or something but not necessarily pi) that should be irrational, but somehow ends up as rational by some sort of infinite coincidence. So instead of all the decimal places being like 458572101832907540932, after a certain point it just recurs, or basically ends and goes 00000000000000 forever. The numbers are still all effectively "random", but they're all 0.
The answer is something along the lines of 'it is possible, but with probability zero'. There are normal numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number) which more or less exhibit complete randomness to all number bases. If you were to generate a real number between 0 and 1 with an infinite sequence of 10-sided die rolls, then the likelihood of you generating a rational, algebraic (the solution of a polynomial with integer coefficients) or non-normal (i.e. non random) number is zero. This because, as subsets of [0,1], these sets have Lebesgue measure zero. Then it becomes a question more philosophical rather than mathematical as to whether 'with probability zero' is the same as 'impossible'.Gavin Chipper wrote:Sometimes I wonder if you could get a number (like pi or something but not necessarily pi) that should be irrational, but somehow ends up as rational by some sort of infinite coincidence. So instead of all the decimal places being like 458572101832907540932, after a certain point it just recurs, or basically ends and goes 00000000000000 forever. The numbers are still all effectively "random", but they're all 0.JimBentley wrote:I wonder what the biggest coincidence ever could beGavin Chipper wrote:This was the biggest coincidence ever.
And then a few minutes later, reading a post of Facebook about someone's holiday in Split, someone said 'split' on the radio. Very exciting.Ian Volante wrote:Was just battling with the Omelette selection 'OYAD', and the bloke talking on the radio emphasised the word 'TODAY'. Thanks, I thought.
I'm telling.Ian Volante wrote:Was just battling with the Omelette selection 'OYAD', and the bloke talking on the radio emphasised the word 'TODAY'. Thanks, I thought.
Lucky coincidence that was.Ian Volante wrote:Was just battling with the Omelette selection 'OYAD', and the bloke talking on the radio emphasised the word 'TODAY'. Thanks, I thought.
Hey, if the chorus to Harry Belafonte's famous Banana Boat Song had been playing at the time, the radio easily might have led you to try a certain invalid 4, so I think it all balances out.Gavin Chipper wrote:I'm telling.Ian Volante wrote:Was just battling with the Omelette selection 'OYAD', and the bloke talking on the radio emphasised the word 'TODAY'. Thanks, I thought.
Johnny Canuck wrote:Hey, if the chorus to Harry Belafonte's famous Banana Boat Song had been playing at the time, the radio easily might have led you to try a certain invalid 4, so I think it all balances out.Gavin Chipper wrote:I'm telling.Ian Volante wrote:Was just battling with the Omelette selection 'OYAD', and the bloke talking on the radio emphasised the word 'TODAY'. Thanks, I thought.
You know, I was thinking the same thing. And I would have gone for it!Johnny Canuck wrote:Hey, if the chorus to Harry Belafonte's famous Banana Boat Song had been playing at the time, the radio easily might have led you to try a certain invalid 4, so I think it all balances out.Gavin Chipper wrote:I'm telling.Ian Volante wrote:Was just battling with the Omelette selection 'OYAD', and the bloke talking on the radio emphasised the word 'TODAY'. Thanks, I thought.
Garth Brooks real name is Troyal though. In the fictional world there's also Garth from Wayne's World who I would have thought is more well known than Marenghi.Gavin Chipper wrote:Other than the fictional Garth Marenghi, there are two people in the world called Garth - Brooks and Crooks. I think that counts.
I still find this very odd. And it's not just the digits before but potentially many of the digits after that you'd think you'd have to know in some cases. You might have, say, a 5 followed by a million zeroes so it would take quite a lot of precision to know it's not a 4 followed by 9s. Weird stuff.Charlie Reams wrote: ↑Wed Sep 21, 2016 10:47 pmBy the way, here's a fun method for calculating a specific digit of pi without having to calculate all the ones before it. (So if you've ever wondered what the 81,241,873,352nd digit of pi is, you can now find out.)
Unfortunate surname......Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Wed Jan 02, 2019 10:20 am William Tunstall-Pedoe did my local parkrun yesterday, and then followed it up by doing a second parkrun at my second nearest (you can do two parkruns on New Year's Day). Who? William Tunstall-Pedoe is who!
Not up to termagent standards, but a nice little diversion.Mark James wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 8:40 am In my job I have to claim money for materials used and I was totalling up four fairly random cost amounts and the exact total of the four amounts was 1234.56.
Yep. Just an XML available on Channel 4’s site if you dig a bit. It gives the text that the episode subtitles say. You can get most game details there