JAN 08
I lecture quite a bit about this to both medical and lay groups. My standard beginning is the following: “If I told you that 99.9 percent of people who get the H1N1 influenza will suffer no significant complications, would that make you feel better?” (Almost everyone says, “Yes.”) “If I told you that 1 million people in Houston will get the H1N1 influenza, and 1,000 of them will suffer significant complications, would that make you feel better?” (Almost everyone says, “No.”) Of course, both examples are the same number expressed in different ways. These are difficult concepts for most folks to grasp, and so many “experts” take advantage of this.
Jeffrey R. Starke, via Freakonomics
JAN 07
When was the last time a bad guy was foiled because he couldn’t use a good camera to take a picture of a tourist attraction?
#!/usr/bin/env ruby puts eval(ARGV.join.gsub(/(\d+)d(\d+)/) {|s| rolls = $1.to_i.times.map { rand($2.to_i) + 1 } sum = rolls.inject {|n,i| n + i } puts "#{s}\t#{sum}\t#{rolls.join(', ')}" sum })
$ ./roll 2d6 + 3d4 2d6 7 2, 5 3d4 11 3, 4, 4 18 $ ./roll 2d6 + 3d4 2d6 5 4, 1 3d4 6 3, 1, 2 11 $ ./roll 2d6 + 3d4 2d6 5 4, 1 3d4 9 4, 2, 3 14