Glenn wrote:
>>Not so, Burgy. The gasket always appears. There is absolutely no chance
the
gasket won't appear--none whatsoever.>>
I have a real difficulty with that answer, Glenn.
For instance, I know that in playing bridge, there is "absolutely no
chance"
(in a practical sense) that each player will be dealt a one suite hand. Yet
-- there
is a remore chance of that happening.
Likewise with the gasket case. Or any probablistic situation. It is just
possible that I can begin to toss this quarter I now hold and have it come
up tails 10,000 times without a single head appearing. Not likely,
possible. It is
also possible it will alternate tails/heads in such a way as to specify the
value of pi to
any desired accuracy.
Interestingly, and I speak here from having done computer simulations as
far back as
the late 1950s, I think it is not possible, even in principle, to ever
observe these rare cases
as outputs from a computer simulation. This is because all known random
number
generators are, at best, pseudo random. I suppose one could rig something
up to
generate the numbers as results of cosmic rays, or dust mote movements, but
I think
there is no way to do so without random outside input.
Burgy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Apr 06 2000 - 12:24:05 EDT