ToadMan

I think I would love to give this a shot, but I don't have any people to work with... plus I would have to think about what meaning I want to get accross. Guess I'll have to re-read the thread on that.

X is the out come of a random event... in this case, the case. so p(X) is the probability that you will draw that value... in the initial setup the p(X) is 3.8% for any number, as the game goes on, since we are removing number without replacement that increases. So for example when the game starts you have p(X) = 3.8% for all numbers and an E[X] = $131477.54. If you open the first 6 and they are the 6 lowest (this in itself is statistically unlikely, but ok for my example), then p(X) for any number is now 5% and E[X] is $170916.25. If you get offered less, you should continue. Next you would open 5, say the 5 highest: p(X) = 6.67% E[X] = 31221.67 Four: 4 lowest: p(X) = 8.3% E[X] = 38995.83 Three: 3 highest: p(X) = 11% E[X] = 10327.78 Two: 2 lowest: p(X) = 14% E[X] = 13178.57 One: 1 highest: p(X) = 16.6% E[X] =7041.67 And this continues. Since the draws are independent, there probabilities are uniform, and the mean is the E[X]. The only flaw here is that you might not walk away with maximum money, but you would stop when the stats say you are being offered more than you should expect to make. I suppose the strategy could be refined to consider best case next round also. That would be you quit since the gain if you select only the lowest values does not push the E[X] about the offer. --- Turns out that some of the analysis here isn't as good of a back of the envelope as I had hoped. Check out http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_...tatistics_.html In extension to that I would give you one more tidbit, at the end of the game, when they have two cases and they ask if you want to switch you should: The p(X) that that case was the high number when you picked it was 0.03, but now you have shown all the other cases to not be that high number. That means that you don't calculate it as 0.5 that either case has the number, you need to find P(X|all the failures) which will show that the P(X) for the case you didn't pick is much higher. It's called the Monty Hall problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem FYI my command of stats isn't as gripping as I would like, so I may be talking out of my ass. --- Ok, I'm wrong it's not the Monty Hall problem, since the origin of the second case is random, all the other cases where opened randomly.

E[X] = sum (X*P(X)) over all X basically the amount you should make... You should always play as long as your expectation is higher than the offer.

I think I would be the worst deal or no deal contestant ever. I mean since I know that it is all about statistics... I would totally take my stats prof to be on my friends panel, and give him a white board... "Howy: Jon deal or no deal Me: I dunno, Let me check the stats * stats prof many scribbles formulas * Me: Ah, well the odds of me improving are better than the odds of me not improving so no deal"

\sigh...

Children please. Less banter, more funny signs!

That show is ridiculous... But so are most game shows these days...

FYI Rico is the most notable example of songs that Matt considers to be his worst work. The idea off Rico not permitted is that it rebuffs the group of fans who go to his concerts and chant Rico. And that is that.

I hear you can actually make a living by doing stuff in Second Life. The brother of my companies CTO makes all his money that way... I hear he runs an electronic museum.

LOL drag and drop song. We only like positive opinions here ;)

I stand by my usage, "can we not just drop the god damn fuck" wouldn't make much sense...

;) that word makes my very angry! can we not just drop the god damn f-bomb!

I will ban people for using 'effing' ever again ;) http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 It's a god damn message bored so don't be afraid to drop an fucking f bomb or two! BTW, I can't actually ban people...

I'll have to ask my magic eight ball... SPOILER (Highlight to View) It said yes... well actually it said reply hazy about 17 times, but I was persistent.

No, the magnitude (or cardinality) of smoking is not inferior to Katherine Heigl... and technically you should take the magnitude of her, so that everything is unitless... that or say that we have a mapping function in each domain called `sexy` that results in a magnitude on an absolute scale. ;)

I am disappointed with the lack of people noticing the reference: http://xkcd.com/c268.html Unless I'm wrong, and that would be spookey

What application? (Based on needing UnRar, and leaving running for long periods, can I guess Bittorent ;)). Are there any messages on the screen (Application Unexpectedly exited)? If there aren't any messages on the screen you might need to check the console (Application->Utilities->Console) That might tell you what is happening. I don't know of any reason an application would be shut down by the OS, except for in a crash. Which may mean that the application has some configuration that causes it to exit on it's own. Jon

I suppose, but when you conduct business in america, you can get sued for anything.

Yeah, they hide nothing. They just don't want to be sued for any reason at all.

AAC works in quicktime. Apple rarely if ever reinvents it's own wheels, so virtually all Audio is done using Quicktime via CoreAudio.

As a side note I would like to point out that Linux is not BSD. BSD is BSD, and has a different hereditary. http://www.levenez.com/unix/

Well it was twofold. One is that most computer problems (software) are PEBCAK. But further, I'm still waiting for you to answer my question from earlier... so it was in mild frustration directed at you... Playfully of course...

hmm, PEBCAK.

To each there own. I haven't had any problems with my powerbook. This is rather interesting though: http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/laptops.html http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=118514&page=5&zoomIdx=1 I'm interested in what you're particular defect is. That is, the one that you believe is a design flaw.

UnRar is the right track. I use UnRarX (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15272) since it has a nice GUI. It's really simple, no command line.