don@allegra.UUCP (D. Mitchell) (04/11/84)
Mr. Caplan. I am pretty sure that if a room holds 8 gas molecules, that in a short while all of them will be on one side for an instant. If there are 10^30 molecules I am content to believe that it will just take a little longer. I have a certain naive faith that arithmetic continues to work even when I run out of fingers and toes to count on.
rpw3@fortune.UUCP (04/13/84)
#R:allegra:-239700:fortune:8600015:000:902 fortune!rpw3 Apr 12 20:00:00 1984 +-------------------- | Mr. Caplan. I am pretty sure that if a room holds 8 gas molecules, | that in a short while all of them will be on one side for an instant. | If there are 10^30 molecules I am content to believe that it will just | take a little longer. I have a certain naive faith that arithmetic | continues to work even when I run out of fingers and toes to count on. +-------------------- The problem with this is that, with a VERY high degree of probability, LONG LONG before ALL the molecules go to one half of the room, you will see an event in which MOST of the molecules go to one side of the room, blowing the walls out due to overpressure (as in a tornado), thus prematurely ending the experiment... ;-} Rob Warnock UUCP: {ihnp4,ucbvax!amd70,hpda,harpo,sri-unix,allegra}!fortune!rpw3 DDD: (415)595-8444 USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065
pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (04/18/84)
>Mr. Caplan. I am pretty sure that if a room holds 8 gas molecules, >that in a short while all of them will be on one side for an instant. >If there are 10^30 molecules I am content to believe that it will just >take a little longer. I have a certain naive faith that arithmetic >continues to work even when I run out of fingers and toes to count on. Depends on how big a room you use, doesn't it? It seems to me that you can do a lot with mathematics that doesn't actually happen. Especially if you assume the time available for the event to happen to be infinite (or at least "enough") and that nothing will ever happen during that huge expanse of time to make the event less probable (which would out weigh things that might make it more probable, of course). Does mathematical proof always "prove" that things can happen, or have happened? (Especially when dealing with phenomena that require much time in order to be "probable"). Isn't a mathematical model always simpler than the thing it models? And couldn't that difference in complexity between the actual and the theoretical make the difference between whether or not something is actually possible? Haven't much faith in things that only happen on paper. Paul Dubuc -- Paul Dubuc ihnp4!cbscc!pmd
crummer%AEROSPACE@sri-unix.UUCP (05/13/84)
From: Charlie Crummer <crummer@AEROSPACE> The activity of tossing a coin can be thought of as an experiment to find out if the coin is good or not. Remember the guys that won a bundle on roulette in Las Vegas? They studied the wheel and found out its bias. I knew a sharp engineer that worked out a Keno scheme. He divided the 80 numbers into 4 groups of 20. He then observed the game for a while and made a histogram of the hits. Then he bet on numbers in the LOWEST group, like betting on T after the string HHHHHHHHHH, because "The Law of Averages" would somehow have to be satisfied. Ideology vs. pragmatism or, in the vernacular of control systems theory, open-loop vs. closed-loop. Only humans can exhibit such stupidity! --Charlie