Sunday, September 26, 2010
Shorter... and Longer Posts
This blog shall be moving into a careful juxtapositioning of shorter and longer posts for maximum effect instead of just getting progressively longer (I'm running out of steam). This will be one of the short ones.
What if you were forced to write...
What would you write, if you had to write, and for a very important exam/assignment/test/assessment etc., and it was graded based on the quality and perceived effort put into the writing, and the topic was weird like...
Are factories worth more than forests?
...
Why write?
...
Would you save a forest or a starving child?
...
What if.
Are factories worth more than forests?
...
Why write?
...
Would you save a forest or a starving child?
...
What if.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
A random post
This post is supposed to be random, and about random. The stuff discussed here is not backed up by much (or even any) material that I have come across in the past years of my life. It just occured to me as I was on my way back... and missed the train (by about 20 seconds) for the 3rd time in a row (2 from the last trip).
This, as the blog post's title suggests, led me to think about bad luck, then luck, then randomness. This was how this post was born: on the way home.
Firstly, about luck. Luck to me is the goodness of the situation which occurs without one's planning. This is not to say that it cannot be of another person's planning: take for example a person walking on a road and being pickpocketed. This was to a certain extent, planned, by somebody else, but when referring to the person, it makes sense to say the person had bad luck. He was behaving in a normal way, walking out to do something, be it to buy lunch or to visit a relative, just like billions of other people in the world, or put into context, a few thousand people who are behaving just like him in a similar environment. Yet, he was the only person (in this scenario) to get pickpocketed. What do we call this? Bad luck.
Next, how bad is your luck? It might be intuitive to say 1/1000 people who were doing the same thing and did not get pickpocketed. But what if another person managed to slip and fall 3 times on a piece of chicken skin, a piece of paper, and a banana peel... and all while wearing the latest shoes with the most effective known grip? Truly bad luck as well. Or what might we say about another person in the thousand who lost 100 times as much as he-who-got-pickpocketed in say, shares? Surely those people are more unlucky? Hence, the figure 1/1000 needs improvement.
How I view it is that you have a known world, and an unknown world. (well generally so, but then again there are blurred areas, like when you think you know something, but it's wrong, or when you think something isn't, but it really is, or you somehow would know it if you ever thought of it) But just say for example you know distinctly a set of things, and you don't know another discreet set of things. Then how bad your luck be could be theorectically determined by a certain algorithm.
Firstly, I shall talk about multiple universes very briefly. Basically, as far as I get it, universes split into two whenever they have to make a choice on something (beats me what a choice is). And after a while, what you get is an effectively infinite number of universes, where very different stuff happen. For example, the nuclear bomb could have failed and clearly things would have come out differently (though how different is unknown; we can only speculate).
Next, we apply a similar concept to the world of the person-who-got-pickpocketed. This is not to say I approve of the theory mentioned above (I don't even understand it fully, and I don't see what's wrong with the deterministic worldview from a scientific point of view). But let us just say there are many universes, with whatever he-who-got-pickpocketed (bah! from now on referred to as Nom) knows to be fixed in all of them. For example, if he knows that there exists a school on the other side of the road, in all the universes, the school will be exactly where it is, and the exact same physics laws will be applied and fundamental phenomena will occur in the exact same way as he knows them to. However, on the other side of the Earth, the pyramids of Egypt might have been built, or they might not have, and this happens with on average 1/2 probability (depending on the known universe). All this will affect whether Nom is pickpocketed. (See butterfly effect*)
Now we rank all those outcomes of the separate possibilities in terms of how good they are for Nom. From this, the current outcome is given a rank, and it shows how unlucky Nom is.
Done with luck. Finally. And I'm getting tired. Now for randomness. *sigh*
Everybody knows about gambling (where everybody is a sweeping term). You put material on some unknown outcome and (usually not) win or (usually) lose money, especially for commercial gambling places.
We first look at how for example, the casino works. Let us look at a classic example. The roulette.
How this works is fundamentally based on the assumption that the results of the roulette wheel are sufficiently random. If anybody can predict certain rolls with sufficient (just a bit above pure guessing) confidence, then it's the end of the casino. More or less. Maybe the casino will adapt. Less I guess.
So let's assume a certain casino plays by a certain rule, and for a moment, let's pretend the complicated mess of ways to gamble on the roulette table never existed, and the only way to gamble was to guess a number. Out of 36+1=37 numbers (0 is usually considered special), you pick one, and if you guess correctly, for each dollar you originally placed on the table, you will win 35 dollars (get back 36 dollars).
So there are a total of assumed 37 possibilities, all with assumed equal probabilities of happening. Now let us apply a similar argument as compared to what happened in the discussion of luck. Of all the possible outcomes, let each one be represented by a universe (of sorts). In 36 universes, you lose 1 dollar. In the last, you win 35 dollars. If you somehow did a summation of all universes, you would realise that in total you lose 1 dollar. In other words, on average, you lose 1/37 of a dollar.
But I just realised that wasn't my point to start with. My point was randomness.
So say you start recording the numbers the appear on the roulette wheel as the ball stops.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ... (Not a very convincing case, but sufficient perhaps)
You observe something! Wait a moment, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, ... but wait another moment. 21+34=55. Not so useful now is it? Ha!
The true thing is actually that (again assuming the roulette wheel is well made) even though it has followed a pattern for the past few rolls, it may just come up with something totally killing the pattern, like 34 (yes again).
So say you see an infinite pattern of integers (whole numbers) from 1 to 9. 3,1,4,1,5,9,2,6,5,... (not very good at coming up with numbers am I?) Now, is this pattern really random? To me, it isn't, as the first 9 numbers in the series follow the digits of pi, and 3 is probably the next number. However, what about 3,5,7,9,1,5,7,1,6,5,8,9,2,4,7,...? I think it to be random, but the way my mind works may not be, given enough information in this rougly deterministic world, and some genius out there may be able to predict with say 12% certainty what the next number in the sequence would be.
So, how random is random?
To me, this boils down to how simplistic the pattern is.
To give an example, now we just look at a series of integers.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...
This pattern is trivial to explain. Each is 1 more than the previous.
Then there are stuff like...
1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45
Where each number is the previous plus 2, 3, 4, ...
Then there is the theory that 3,5,7,8,4,5,4,6,15,156,6,5,4,6,2, ... can be described by a 14th degree polynomial (See Lagrange interpolation, no, not on this site).
So there, we just described it. But is it still random?
To a large part, yes, I just "randomly" typed numbers on the keyboard separated by commas. However, if you noticed, the largest number is only 3 digits, and this might be a reason to say it is not random. But as far as I'm concerned, this pattern is random because it doesn't have any easily explanable pattern for a series of its length.
I think I had more to say, but after so long, I pretty much forgot what I started off wanting to write, so for now, tada. Adieu. And arrivederci (cool word). Aah! "A"s! Atrocious! Already too hard for me to continue (see line itself for explanation why not all words began with A).
*Butterfly effect: When a butterfly flaps its wings in India, it can cause a tsunami in China. Ok, that's just my random restatement of the principle, but as far as I know, the principle still remains equivalent. How that happens, is in fact similar to the domino effect, where a small change in the initial state can result in a large change in endstate (all up, or all down). Similar things happen in real life. Now let me tell you a story (and cause a million people to die of different reasons).
A rat is in a maze. It turns left, and there is normality (as we know it).
If however, it had turned right...
It would have tipped the scales for the 95% confidence interval for the scientific report.
Which would have made the head scientist frustrated with life.
Which would have made him cancel his family trip to Thailand.
Which would mean that 200 shops in Thailand would go with one customer less.
Which might have been the critical point for starting a silent protest.
Which might have slowed down the Thailand economy.
Which would have in turn affected the amount of trade they did with the United States.
Which would have affected the President of the United States' mood for just a day.
Which would have influenced policies concerning 200 million citizens (number from failed memory).
Which would have made people hungry and hence kill rats as a substitute for animal fodder.
Now we review. Just because a single lab rat had made a "wrong" turn, it had caused a mini-holocaust of rats somewhere on the other side of the world. (depending on the scientist's nationality of course).
Not that this happens very often, but it does happen, and in ways impossible to predict. On the other hand, a tsunami might change little. There you go.
This, as the blog post's title suggests, led me to think about bad luck, then luck, then randomness. This was how this post was born: on the way home.
Firstly, about luck. Luck to me is the goodness of the situation which occurs without one's planning. This is not to say that it cannot be of another person's planning: take for example a person walking on a road and being pickpocketed. This was to a certain extent, planned, by somebody else, but when referring to the person, it makes sense to say the person had bad luck. He was behaving in a normal way, walking out to do something, be it to buy lunch or to visit a relative, just like billions of other people in the world, or put into context, a few thousand people who are behaving just like him in a similar environment. Yet, he was the only person (in this scenario) to get pickpocketed. What do we call this? Bad luck.
Next, how bad is your luck? It might be intuitive to say 1/1000 people who were doing the same thing and did not get pickpocketed. But what if another person managed to slip and fall 3 times on a piece of chicken skin, a piece of paper, and a banana peel... and all while wearing the latest shoes with the most effective known grip? Truly bad luck as well. Or what might we say about another person in the thousand who lost 100 times as much as he-who-got-pickpocketed in say, shares? Surely those people are more unlucky? Hence, the figure 1/1000 needs improvement.
How I view it is that you have a known world, and an unknown world. (well generally so, but then again there are blurred areas, like when you think you know something, but it's wrong, or when you think something isn't, but it really is, or you somehow would know it if you ever thought of it
Firstly, I shall talk about multiple universes very briefly. Basically, as far as I get it, universes split into two whenever they have to make a choice on something (beats me what a choice is). And after a while, what you get is an effectively infinite number of universes, where very different stuff happen. For example, the nuclear bomb could have failed and clearly things would have come out differently (though how different is unknown; we can only speculate).
Next, we apply a similar concept to the world of the person-who-got-pickpocketed. This is not to say I approve of the theory mentioned above (I don't even understand it fully, and I don't see what's wrong with the deterministic worldview from a scientific point of view). But let us just say there are many universes, with whatever he-who-got-pickpocketed (bah! from now on referred to as Nom) knows to be fixed in all of them. For example, if he knows that there exists a school on the other side of the road, in all the universes, the school will be exactly where it is, and the exact same physics laws will be applied and fundamental phenomena will occur in the exact same way as he knows them to. However, on the other side of the Earth, the pyramids of Egypt might have been built, or they might not have, and this happens with on average 1/2 probability (depending on the known universe). All this will affect whether Nom is pickpocketed. (See butterfly effect*)
Now we rank all those outcomes of the separate possibilities in terms of how good they are for Nom. From this, the current outcome is given a rank, and it shows how unlucky Nom is.
Done with luck. Finally. And I'm getting tired. Now for randomness. *sigh*
Everybody knows about gambling (where everybody is a sweeping term). You put material on some unknown outcome and (usually not) win or (usually) lose money, especially for commercial gambling places.
We first look at how for example, the casino works. Let us look at a classic example. The roulette.
How this works is fundamentally based on the assumption that the results of the roulette wheel are sufficiently random. If anybody can predict certain rolls with sufficient (just a bit above pure guessing) confidence, then it's the end of the casino. More or less. Maybe the casino will adapt. Less I guess.
So let's assume a certain casino plays by a certain rule, and for a moment, let's pretend the complicated mess of ways to gamble on the roulette table never existed, and the only way to gamble was to guess a number. Out of 36+1=37 numbers (0 is usually considered special), you pick one, and if you guess correctly, for each dollar you originally placed on the table, you will win 35 dollars (get back 36 dollars).
So there are a total of assumed 37 possibilities, all with assumed equal probabilities of happening. Now let us apply a similar argument as compared to what happened in the discussion of luck. Of all the possible outcomes, let each one be represented by a universe (of sorts). In 36 universes, you lose 1 dollar. In the last, you win 35 dollars. If you somehow did a summation of all universes, you would realise that in total you lose 1 dollar. In other words, on average, you lose 1/37 of a dollar.
But I just realised that wasn't my point to start with. My point was randomness.
So say you start recording the numbers the appear on the roulette wheel as the ball stops.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ... (Not a very convincing case, but sufficient perhaps)
You observe something! Wait a moment, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, ... but wait another moment. 21+34=55. Not so useful now is it? Ha!
The true thing is actually that (again assuming the roulette wheel is well made) even though it has followed a pattern for the past few rolls, it may just come up with something totally killing the pattern, like 34 (yes again).
So say you see an infinite pattern of integers (whole numbers) from 1 to 9. 3,1,4,1,5,9,2,6,5,... (not very good at coming up with numbers am I?) Now, is this pattern really random? To me, it isn't, as the first 9 numbers in the series follow the digits of pi, and 3 is probably the next number. However, what about 3,5,7,9,1,5,7,1,6,5,8,9,2,4,7,...? I think it to be random, but the way my mind works may not be, given enough information in this rougly deterministic world, and some genius out there may be able to predict with say 12% certainty what the next number in the sequence would be.
So, how random is random?
To me, this boils down to how simplistic the pattern is.
To give an example, now we just look at a series of integers.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...
This pattern is trivial to explain. Each is 1 more than the previous.
Then there are stuff like...
1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45
Where each number is the previous plus 2, 3, 4, ...
Then there is the theory that 3,5,7,8,4,5,4,6,15,156,6,5,4,6,2, ... can be described by a 14th degree polynomial (See Lagrange interpolation, no, not on this site).
So there, we just described it. But is it still random?
To a large part, yes, I just "randomly" typed numbers on the keyboard separated by commas. However, if you noticed, the largest number is only 3 digits, and this might be a reason to say it is not random. But as far as I'm concerned, this pattern is random because it doesn't have any easily explanable pattern for a series of its length.
I think I had more to say, but after so long, I pretty much forgot what I started off wanting to write, so for now, tada. Adieu. And arrivederci (cool word). Aah! "A"s! Atrocious! Already too hard for me to continue (see line itself for explanation why not all words began with A).
*Butterfly effect: When a butterfly flaps its wings in India, it can cause a tsunami in China. Ok, that's just my random restatement of the principle, but as far as I know, the principle still remains equivalent. How that happens, is in fact similar to the domino effect, where a small change in the initial state can result in a large change in endstate (all up, or all down). Similar things happen in real life. Now let me tell you a story (and cause a million people to die of different reasons).
A rat is in a maze. It turns left, and there is normality (as we know it).
If however, it had turned right...
It would have tipped the scales for the 95% confidence interval for the scientific report.
Which would have made the head scientist frustrated with life.
Which would have made him cancel his family trip to Thailand.
Which would mean that 200 shops in Thailand would go with one customer less.
Which might have been the critical point for starting a silent protest.
Which might have slowed down the Thailand economy.
Which would have in turn affected the amount of trade they did with the United States.
Which would have affected the President of the United States' mood for just a day.
Which would have influenced policies concerning 200 million citizens (number from failed memory).
Which would have made people hungry and hence kill rats as a substitute for animal fodder.
Now we review. Just because a single lab rat had made a "wrong" turn, it had caused a mini-holocaust of rats somewhere on the other side of the world. (depending on the scientist's nationality of course).
Not that this happens very often, but it does happen, and in ways impossible to predict. On the other hand, a tsunami might change little. There you go.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
An appearance.
I am one who just seeks to appear normal and insane.
A little hard to pull both off at once, naturally, but it is doable.
To those literate in the chesses, of course. Normal with regard to the world. Your world, that is. Because it doesn't really matter how it is.
Within the virtual confines of a planar grid, imaginary pieces wage invisible war, careening between squares in an organised dance of combat.
It is the elegance with which these pieces dance that marks the insane. The better choreographed the moves, the better the general's insight. The more remarkable and surprising routines, ah, those routines...
Belong to the insane.
Not to say that doesn't win chess games. It does, with a genuinely unexpected success rate, somewhere between 2% to 50%, depending on the opposition. Ridiculous combinations of pieces and lines of defence, non-standard formations, they share a quality of beauty and practicality in their execution.
I wonder why so few people play chess creatively.
A little hard to pull both off at once, naturally, but it is doable.
To those literate in the chesses, of course. Normal with regard to the world. Your world, that is. Because it doesn't really matter how it is.
Within the virtual confines of a planar grid, imaginary pieces wage invisible war, careening between squares in an organised dance of combat.
It is the elegance with which these pieces dance that marks the insane. The better choreographed the moves, the better the general's insight. The more remarkable and surprising routines, ah, those routines...
Belong to the insane.
Not to say that doesn't win chess games. It does, with a genuinely unexpected success rate, somewhere between 2% to 50%, depending on the opposition. Ridiculous combinations of pieces and lines of defence, non-standard formations, they share a quality of beauty and practicality in their execution.
I wonder why so few people play chess creatively.
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