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Memories of the 28th Century

Miscellaneous thoughts about miscellaneous matters

  1. Judging Probabilities

    by , 04-04-2014 at 09:27 AM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (From “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” by Arthur Conan Doyle)

    Doyle presented an interesting idea, but I have to take exception to it; although it may just be a result of how we think of probability. There are some things that are possible that are so improbable that they might as well be impossible. It is easy to look at normal probability distributions ...