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[-] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Very weird fun fact about arrows/darts and statistics, theres 0% chance of hitting an exact bullseye. You can hit it its possible to throw a perfect bullseye. It just has a probability of zero when mathematically analyzed due to being an infinitesimally small point. Sound like I'm making shit up? Here's the sauce

How can an outcome both be entirely possible and have 0% probability?

Q.E.D

[-] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 30 points 3 weeks ago

Key word here is "infinitesimally." Of course if you're calculating the odds of hitting something infinitesimally small you're going to get 0. That's just the nature of infinities. It is impossible to hit an infinitesimally small point, but that's not what a human considers to be a "perfect bullseye." There's no paradox here.

[-] Wolf314159@startrek.website 13 points 3 weeks ago

Another lesson I the importance of significant digits, a concept I've had to remind many a young (and sometimes an old) engineer about. An interesting idea along similar lines is that 2 + 2 can equal 5 for significantly large values of 2.

[-] gibmiser@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

What do you mean by significantly large

[-] skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 weeks ago

Depending on how you're rounding, I assume. Standard rounding to whole digits states that 2.4 will round to 2 but 4.8 will round to 5. So 2.4+2.4=4.8 can be reasonably simplified to 2+2=5.

This is part of why it's important to know what your significant digits are, because in this case the tenths digit is a bit load bearing. But, as an example, 2.43 the 3 in the hundredths digit has no bearing on our result and can be rounded or truncated.

[-] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 weeks ago

Also the circumference of the dart tip is not infinitesimally small, so theres a definite chance of it overlapping the 'perfect bullseye' by hitting any number of nearby points.

[-] aim_at_me@lemmy.nz 2 points 3 weeks ago

Oh. That's what they mean. That's dumb lol.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

You must not be playing on a soft tip board.
Image of a soft tipped dart board.

this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
1268 points (98.8% liked)

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