Large Hardon Collider

[Woozie]

Don't take thermo with a chinese professor who thinks Americans are inferior to his people. It makes it 10 times worse.

I'm not exaggerating when I say he would often spend up to half the class talking about that, or about how his daughter is the best thing since sliced bread or something. Or something equally insulting and/or unrelated to thermal/statistical physics.

I wouldn't even mind a bad teacher so much because I learn mostly from the book anyways. But the book sucked and his lecture notes sucked (he had like 300 pages, which he passed out the first day of class, which essentially gave us an extra book to carry). I went to the library for their books and tried my hardest, but thermo/statistical physics isn't an easy subject to do on your own.

[Eliseos]

Ugh, I hate professors like that. I'm not paying them to tell me how much they hate me, nor to spend half of the lecture on random tangents completely unrelated to the subject.

EDIT: Probably going to have to take a summer class. Pretty much everything I have left are tiered courses (IE, I have to take one before the other) which means I don't have much flexibility in my schedule. The last CS class that I have to take in the spring is conflicted with the last EE class I have to take in the spring, this coming fall. It's offered MW 5:30-7:50 during the summer, so it isn't too bad, and if it is conflicted next spring then I'll have to take it next summer anyways. Ugh, didn't want to take anything this summer either. Plus, if E&M II and QM II are as hard as you guys are saying, that's more free time I will have to study for those classes.

[pahnphoenix]

No, it's not. If that was all you knew, the correct answer is: "I have no idea and I can't give you a number. If I were to give you a number, I'd be pulling it out of my ass".

If you don't have enough information to know how probable it is that it's true nor enough information on how probable it is that it's false, then you can't assign a number to it. The moment you say it's 50/50, you have to explain why it isn't 30/70, or 40/60. If two outcomes can happen, and you have little to no information on why one outcome would happen over the other, then you've no business assigning a probability to either outcome. Otherwise you're just making shit up.

There is not a 50/50 chance there is currently a race of invisible space monkeys in the core of Europa, despite the fact that we're in no position to verify that statement directly (or indirectly).

You could make an argument for what is and isn't reasonable to believe, but that's a different argument and it isn't science.

straw man. for one, occam's razor eliminates theories with unnecessary entities to explain facts (the world is X + invisible unobservable Y that never affects anything). second, you know how monkeys work to a certain degree, you know other stuff. re: God, i think there is a large probability that whatever most people mean by 'God' when they say it does not exist, because there's compelling historical explanations for why people believe in God when it doesn't exist. so, the probability changes.

but when you're calculating odds or risk, you must go on what you know. if you know 2 outcomes, the odds are 50/50 (as far as you know).

to the guy saying i'm a moron, i'm actually capable of distinguishing between epistemology and metaphysics, and i can also keep a straight train of thought (eg i don't introduce plainly irrelevant examples, like the monkey one). what this implies is that i'm significantly smarter than both of you, as well as likely more educated.

[Eliseos]

to the guy saying i'm a moron, i'm actually capable of distinguishing between epistemology and metaphysics, and i can also keep a straight train of thought (eg i don't introduce plainly irrelevant examples, like the monkey one). what this implies is that i'm significantly smarter than both of you, as well as likely more educated.

Max already used the "holier than thou" card earlier in this thread.

[Max™]

I'm not holier than thou...

http://i.adultswim.com/adultswim/too...sordoll280.jpg

...but I am holier than you.

[pahnphoenix]

it's not a card, it's a tactic. i have to do something to pass the time.

[Kaylia]

but when you're calculating odds or risk, you must go on what you know. if you know 2 outcomes, the odds are 50/50 (as far as you know).

When I cross the street, I can get hit or not by car. So there is 50% chance I get hit. I cross 12 road when I go to school, so it's almost certain that I die every morning.

I love your stats.

[pahnphoenix]

When I cross the street, I can get hit or not by car. So there is 50% chance I get hit. I cross 12 road when I go to school, so it's almost certain that I die every morning.

I love your stats.

you can't be this stupid. WHEN YOU CROSS THE STREET, YOU KNOW MORE THAN JUST "A CAR MAY HIT ME OR MAY NOT". read the posts if you're going to respond to them. and i thought i was trolling... are you trying to convince me you're an idiot?

[Kaylia]

you can't be this stupid. WHEN YOU CROSS THE STREET, YOU KNOW MORE THAN JUST "A CAR MAY HIT ME OR MAY NOT". read the posts if you're going to respond to them. and i thought i was trolling... are you trying to convince me you're an idiot?

Yes, it could be a bus that hit me, so 33% chance.



I did read your post, and you still confuse educated guess with a scientific statement/knowledge. I told you already, but you choose to ignore it.

[Max™]

Wait wait wait, I know what I must do now...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics


Boosh.

[Kaylia]

Wait wait wait, I know what I must do now...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics


Boosh.

You can't learn stats on wiki. fool.

[Max™]

Damnation!

Foiled again!

[Kaylia]

I wonder how fucked up advanced statistics are? I've seen really nasty maths in nearly every domain, but almost nothing in statistics.

[Max™]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/cramster-res...view_crib2.jpg

http://www.statistics.com/credit/programs/

Looks pretty fucked up to me.

[pahnphoenix]

Yes, it could be a bus that hit me, so 33% chance.



I did read your post, and you still confuse educated guess with a scientific statement/knowledge. I told you already, but you choose to ignore it.

no, i'm explaining to you how to calculate the odds of something happening as if you were a child. just because you don't arrive at truth doesn't mean you can't give odds for something. when was the last time you read an article in a journal where the point was "there's a good chance of X"? neither i nor hawking made a claim to knowledge, or a scientific statement (whatever that vague combination of words you chose is supposed to mean...).

do i need to keep giving examples? is everyone reading this as stupid as you? suppose someone named "unknown user" posts once on BG. for all i know, they could be male or female. 50/50 chance. but then i discover some BG demographic info. the odds change. the probability changes, as far as i know. that is the only kind of probability you deal with when you ask "are aliens friendly?" only a fool would think that physicists could give us the kind of full on, metaphysical probability of aliens being friendly. also, only a fool would think that odds reasonably given always coincide with the actual probability (given omniscience) of any event.

edit: re: stats wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk

[Kaylia]

[IMG]http://s3.amazonaws.com/cramster-resource/22051_preview_crib2.jpg

[URL]http://www.statistics.com/credit/programs/

Looks pretty fucked up to me.

Nah, that's what you use in physic statistics and QM, it's not that bad. I'm pretty sure I used this definition of normal distribution in physics maths as well.

Thing like error function, and other statistical function that occasionally pop up in mathematica is what I've no clue about. Well, error function doesnt look so bad after checking it out of wiki, but I'm sure there is something weirder than that.

[Max™]

Well, that's just a crib sheet from Stat 2 class, it looks like, most of the more advanced stuff I've found seemed to be applied statistics, data mining, environmental, etc.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/...tatistics.html

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/...icalTests.html

Some terms in there I don't recognize from physics at all, but I suspect that is due to their specific field of utility.

[Kryssan]

Angst angst angst. I'd laugh, but I think there aren't enough wiki links yet. Get to work slackers.

[Max™]

I tried, Kaylia told me you can't learn statistics from Wikipedia, so I'm doomed, as I only learn things from Wikipedia.

Incidentally, I can't find the page on eating a bowl of cereal, and I'm starving to death... any help?

[Kryssan]

I tried, Kaylia told me you can't learn statistics from Wikipedia, so I'm doomed, as I only learn things from Wikipedia.

Kaylia isn't on wikipedia, why are you acknowledging him?

Incidentally, I can't find the page on eating a bowl of cereal, and I'm starving to death... any help?

LMGTFY