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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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Probability theory to the rescue:
Assume you have two binary variables X and Y. X is equal to 1 if you're sick, 0 otherwise. Y is equal to 1 if you win the lottery, 0 otherwise.
Your question implicitly asks what the probability of winning would be given that you're not sick. By definition that would be:
p = P("X=0" and "Y=1") / P("X=0")And you're stuck with the
"X=0" and "Y=1"event as you need some knowledge about how X and Y are related to each other.In other words, does your health have any effect on how the lottery machine works? Or vice versa, does the lottery machine impact your health? As the answer to both is obviously no (as there's no physically possible way that could be true, unless you believe in the paranormal and there being some god who plays around with the probabilities), it's reasonable to assume that X and Y are independent, in which case
P("X=0" and "Y=1") = P("X=0") * P("Y=1"), but then this simply means thatp = P("Y=1"), ie your health doesn't matter: whether you're healthy or sick, that doesn't change the probability of you winning the lottery.1 or 0. Odds are 50/50. Got it.