Testing random

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 3:07 AM, Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 2:36 AM, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn
>> <PointedEars at web.de> wrote:
>>>> The greater the multiplier, the lower the chance that any element will
>>>> have no hits.
>>>
>>> Wrong.
>>>
>>>> [ex falso quodlibet]
>>
>> Huh. Do you want to explain how, mathematically, I am wrong, or do you
>> want to join the RUE in my ignore list?
>
> My best speculation is that he's either objecting to the generality of
> your statement (it's false if the probability of some element
> occurring is zero or eventually degrades to zero), or misreading the
> word "multiplier" to the conclusion that the value of each element is
> being multiplied rather than the number of trials. Or trolling; I
> suppose that's always an option too.

My first thought was your first option, which is why I specifically
responded with explanation about how data type selection can viably be
about expectations rather than certainties, but he responded with a
one-word "Wrong" so I must have been answering the wrong question.
I've no idea about the misreading of "multiplier". A fourth
possibility is that mathematics works differently for him and for us,
which I suppose is possible; when I visited sci.math a while ago, I
found some people for whom everything I'd learned in grade school was
clearly wrong, and they were doing their best to enlighten the world
about the new truths of mathematics that they'd found.

ChrisA