EPTAsk and answer stupid questions here! - Page 561
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Karis Vas Ryaar
United States4396 Posts
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Yoav
United States1874 Posts
On December 31 2016 04:56 Thieving Magpie wrote: Go to a random classroom of 14 year olds. Ask them who the smartest in the room is, then ask the teacher who the smartest in the room is. They will give the same 2-3 people as their best guess. Having spent a fair bit of time working with kids, you know that they will in fact consistently underestimate the intelligence of their female peers, right? And that shyness counts against you in this test? And that kids (and dumb adults too) often think somebody is smart just because there's some random topic they know a lot about? | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
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Karis Vas Ryaar
United States4396 Posts
On January 03 2017 01:35 Yoav wrote: Having spent a fair bit of time working with kids, you know that they will in fact consistently underestimate the intelligence of their female peers, right? And that shyness counts against you in this test? And that kids (and dumb adults too) often think somebody is smart just because there's some random topic they know a lot about? more problems also. are we talking art class? math class? how would students know whose smart if they only hear certain people speaking up? I usually find the same few people always answer the teacher. Know the teacher gets to read actual assignments but again, they could have outside help. If bob has a tutor who gets paid 15k a year (my cousin had something like that) help him with school and gets good grades does that mean bob is smart or that his parents are rich? and maybe Billy is smart but he doesn't do his work because his parents are getting a messy divorce and he doesn't care. also I'm not a big fan of random knowledge equaling intelligence which is what most school seems to be. so your smarter just because you like reading nonfiction books? I like a quote from calvin and hobbes "I'm not dumb my heads just full of completely useless information" (not exact but you get the idea). Plus what about the guy who gets bad grade but can fix everything just by looking about it. or the kid who doesn't care about school because he's starting his own buisness and intends to do that when he graduates. that would give you a good idea of whats percieved as smart though. | ||
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Simberto
Germany12062 Posts
If you want to do anything that even resembles making any sense whatsoever, you need to start by clearly defining the words you use. As someone studying maths, it is weird how many everyday terms are not very well defined, and how many people are not able to recognize that this is the root of so many discussions they have. And pretty often they don't even have a good idea of what a good definition actually encompasses. It is incredibly frustrating to wade through whole discussions that boil down to "We didn't bother defining the words we use, and we are incapable of even recognizing that the other clearly has a different definition of the word." Just fucking define the words you use. Then you can have logical arguments. If you don't, the whole discussion makes no sense whatsoever. | ||
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Karis Vas Ryaar
United States4396 Posts
On January 03 2017 07:17 Simberto wrote: That problem only arises because you are using ill-defined every day usage words. If you want to do anything that even resembles making any sense whatsoever, you need to start by clearly defining the words you use. As someone studying maths, it is weird how many everyday terms are not very well defined, and how many people are not able to recognize that this is the root of so many discussions they have. And pretty often they don't even have a good idea of what a good definition actually encompasses. It is incredibly frustrating to wade through whole discussions that boil down to "We didn't bother defining the words we use, and we are incapable of even recognizing that the other clearly has a different definition of the word." Just fucking define the words you use. Then you can have logical arguments. If you don't, the whole discussion makes no sense whatsoever. well yeah but the question was what is being smart. if you define intelligence as x then your defining x not the general idea of intelligence. words are vague. you can define stuff as much as you want but the definition is what we're talking about and there's no definitive definition. if you define something as x then argue it means x that's a tautology and/or circular argument. certainly if you want to actually do something with it you need to define what it is your using it as. so basically it depends on what we're trying to do. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On January 03 2017 09:21 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: well yeah but the question was what is being smart. if you define intelligence as x then your defining x not the general idea of intelligence. words are vague. you can define stuff as much as you want but the definition is what we're talking about and there's no definitive definition. if you define something as x then argue it means x that's a tautology and/or circular argument. certainly if you want to actually do something with it you need to define what it is your using it as. so basically it depends on what we're trying to do. There's nothing vague about it. You disagreeing with a kids choice on who he thinks is smart is your problem. It isn't the word's problem, it isn't the kid's problem, it's yours. Ask a kid who he thinks is smart in a group and he will be able to point. You agreeing or disagreeing with him has no bearings on his answer. | ||
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Karis Vas Ryaar
United States4396 Posts
On January 03 2017 10:34 Thieving Magpie wrote: There's nothing vague about it. You disagreeing with a kids choice on who he thinks is smart is your problem. It isn't the word's problem, it isn't the kid's problem, it's yours. Ask a kid who he thinks is smart in a group and he will be able to point. You agreeing or disagreeing with him has no bearings on his answer. think I got a little off topic maybe. but yeah the kid thinks someone's the smartest person. I'm not denying that. of course if you ask 30 kids you might get quite a few different answers. Ask them what smartest means and you'll prob get a few different answers as well. I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make so I'm not sure how to response. Obviously I'm not saying the kid is wrong or anything. If the question is about being perceived a smart then obviously you care about what people think. maybe I drifted a bit too far into trying to deal with the inherent vagueness of the term and the fact that you can view it differently. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On January 03 2017 07:17 Simberto wrote: That problem only arises because you are using ill-defined every day usage words. If you want to do anything that even resembles making any sense whatsoever, you need to start by clearly defining the words you use. As someone studying maths, it is weird how many everyday terms are not very well defined, and how many people are not able to recognize that this is the root of so many discussions they have. And pretty often they don't even have a good idea of what a good definition actually encompasses. It is incredibly frustrating to wade through whole discussions that boil down to "We didn't bother defining the words we use, and we are incapable of even recognizing that the other clearly has a different definition of the word." Just fucking define the words you use. Then you can have logical arguments. If you don't, the whole discussion makes no sense whatsoever. You're not wrong, and I agree that different use of certain words is the root of many arguments. It's often a good idea to reformulate your statements without using the key words that you are arguing about. But I also feel that you're not giving enough credit to the complexity of language and social interactions. Social science isn't as artificially clean as maths, so cannot have as high standards. If we want to communicate at all, we need words, and it's not plausible to give mathematical accuracy definition of every word in the dictionary. Indeed, this entire discussion is an attempt at nailing down a good definition of the word "smart", so it should be something you approve of. I also think that it is a good illustration of the difficulty of the problem. It's not always that easy to "fucking define the word". We can find objective definition ("someone is smart if she scores over 130 on an IQ test") that don't mean what we want it to mean, or we do vague definitions (like peer recognition: "someone is smart if others think she is smart") that is of little help in downstream analysis. | ||
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FiWiFaKi
Canada9859 Posts
So then, not that related, but I asked myself a simple question. If I start with $100, and I play a game where I wager $1 to toss a coin, and if I win, I get $2 back, but if I lose, I don't get the money, what is the probability that I will lose all my money (hence unable to play the game further), as I approach an infinite amount of tries. So I think this one is fairly obvious intuitively, getting a probability of 1. However, what if instead, I receive $3 for winning, and for losing I lose my $1? To me it seems like as long as I win more than $2 for each play, the probability that I lose all my money will not be infinite. What would the generalized formula for this problem be? x - winning amount y - wager amount a - starting amount | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18487 Posts
Oh, but given your propensity for welching on your bets, the chances of you keeping this up for an infinite amount of time are 0, so ignore the above. You run 0 risk of losing all your money, because you're too cowardly to even play the game... | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On January 03 2017 18:00 FiWiFaKi wrote: So I today was one of those days where I took a voyage on Wikipedia. Started with P vs NP, time complexity, different types of problems within that (halting problem), turing machines, then quantum computing, and then some statistics stuff. So then, not that related, but I asked myself a simple question. If I start with $100, and I play a game where I wager $1 to toss a coin, and if I win, I get $2 back, but if I lose, I don't get the money, what is the probability that I will lose all my money (hence unable to play the game further), as I approach an infinite amount of tries. So I think this one is fairly obvious intuitively, getting a probability of 1. However, what if instead, I receive $3 for winning, and for losing I lose my $1? To me it seems like as long as I win more than $2 for each play, the probability that I lose all my money will not be infinite. What would the generalized formula for this problem be? x - winning amount y - wager amount a - starting amount You are talking about random walks. For win 1, lose 1, you will lose all your money eventually. It can take some time if you're lucky, but you'll lose it eventually. You can think of it as you having equal probability to hit 0 or 200 starting from 100. Assuming you are lucky and hit 200, you then have equal probability to hit 400 or 0. And so on. Each doubling step will take longer (scaling as the square of the number I think), but you'll hit 0 eventually. If you have an average gain, I think you have a chance to make it to infinity. Say that you have 40% risk to lose your 100, and 60% chance to hit 200 before that. When you go from 200 to 0 or 400, the risk will be less than 40% to hit zero (as the steps are relatively smaller, so less likely to deviate from mean). So as opposed to the 50% scenario, each step has less risk. Not sure how the convergence goes (I guess this is the calculation you want....), but IIRC the product of the chances to make it converges to something non-zero. I may try to do the calculation later if I get the urge.  This isn't a formula, but you can understand it intuitively: your expected bank roll increases linearly with number of bets, while the deviation from the expected bank roll increases as the square root of the number of bets. So as you go towards infinity, the risk to lose your money will go to zero. It's just a matter of getting there, which I think would be a non-zero chance... Hmm. | ||
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FiWiFaKi
Canada9859 Posts
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Oshuy
Netherlands529 Posts
On January 02 2017 10:55 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: was flying planes through barns something that stunt pilots actually did? As a regular thing: no. In the early 1920s a number of stunt pilot acts (barnstormers) toured (us mainly). Main stunts were wind walking/parachuting/acrobatic flight. Each pilot had his/her own special stunt, but none flew through a barn as part of the standard act. It would have needed to have an empty barn with the correct door sizes, not something you can expect to find in each town when touring. However a number of similar stunts were made : flying under known monuments (known bridges or in Paris eiffel tower/arc de triomphe, etc.) In 1932, for the film "Air Mail", Paul Mantz flew through a hangar and I believe there were similar movie stunts where a plane flew through a barn. However these were barns/hangars built for the stunt. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On January 03 2017 19:46 FiWiFaKi wrote: Yeah Cascade, I got to that point with my thinking, and you're mostly rehashing my thoughts - though reinforcing my view that you can run-away with it and reach infinity (if your expected profit > 0). Indeed, the converge and how it works is the stuff I'm interested in Mmm, I had a go at a calculation, trying to do a taylor expansion in the risk k of dying before you double up, but I didn't really find a way to solve it for arbitrary powers, let alone figuring out a neat closed form for the expression... I essentially just summed up the probabilities for 100 --> 0, and 100 --> 200 --> 0 and 100 --> 200 --> 400 --> 0, and so on. But no luck. Either I missed something in that approach, or a different angle is needed. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18487 Posts
Now if you want practical bounds, look at the literature on stochastic algorithms. | ||
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FiWiFaKi
Canada9859 Posts
On January 04 2017 00:32 Acrofales wrote: You both seem to be missing the point of what it means to continue on until infinity. You're not stopping if you double up. You're stopping only if you go bust. It's like a Las Vegas algorithm. You will either terminate (you went bust) or keep on. The more you stack the odds towards profit, the smaller your chance becomes of actually going bust, and thus terminating in reasonable time. But the fact is still there: given an infinite amount of time it will actually happen. Now if you want practical bounds, look at the literature on stochastic algorithms. I don't think so, this type of problem looks like a (1+1/x)^x type of problem... The kind that as it goes to infinity gives you a fraction of infinity/infinity, and then you have to do things to treat it differently. Just logically it seems very unlikely to always happen, since as Cascades logic follows. There might only be a 1% probability you lose you lose before you get to $200, then an additional 0.1% probability before you get too $400. And then when looking at the cumulative probability, you'll begin to see a convergence to some value. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On January 04 2017 00:32 Acrofales wrote: You both seem to be missing the point of what it means to continue on until infinity. You're not stopping if you double up. You're stopping only if you go bust. It's like a Las Vegas algorithm. You will either terminate (you went bust) or keep on. The more you stack the odds towards profit, the smaller your chance becomes of actually going bust, and thus terminating in reasonable time. But the fact is still there: given an infinite amount of time it will actually happen. Now if you want practical bounds, look at the literature on stochastic algorithms. yeah, that's the case with an expectation value of 0 or negative. Question is, with a positive expectation value (which you won't find in a casino), are you still certain that you will go broke eventually? If not, what is the risk? | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18487 Posts
On January 04 2017 00:51 Cascade wrote: yeah, that's the case with an expectation value of 0 or negative. Question is, with a positive expectation value (which you won't find in a casino), are you still certain that you will go broke eventually? If not, what is the risk? It either terminates (you go broke) or it doesn't. If you run for infinite time, you WILL go broke, even if there's only a one in a googolplex chance of that happening. It's what infinity is all about. So, let's say that on a loss you lose 1 dollar, and on a win you get 1000, then it's clear the expected value trends to infinity, and yet, because you don't give a shit about the expected value, but only about your termination condition (you're broke), you will literally only terminate when that happens. And in the infinite limit, that happens, because infinity is stupid like that. In PRACTICE, of course, that is entirely meaningless. But that wasn't the question. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On January 03 2017 10:42 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: think I got a little off topic maybe. but yeah the kid thinks someone's the smartest person. I'm not denying that. of course if you ask 30 kids you might get quite a few different answers. Ask them what smartest means and you'll prob get a few different answers as well. I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make so I'm not sure how to response. Obviously I'm not saying the kid is wrong or anything. If the question is about being perceived a smart then obviously you care about what people think. maybe I drifted a bit too far into trying to deal with the inherent vagueness of the term and the fact that you can view it differently. My example was showcasing the difference between words which have a fairly specific meaning to a person, and words that require more context for a person to gleam meaning from. Asking a group who the smartest is will generate an answer from them. Asking the group who the genius is will have them asking you to contextualize what you mean ("genius at what?" they would retort) A person's accuracy at pointing out who the smartest is has no bearing as to him thinking someone is the smartest because people have a fairly rigid understanding of what that term means. Genius, is more fluid. | ||
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