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I would have to say that my poor dietary decisions in my early 20's to late 30's have become my bete noir. I am now facing liver disease related to fatty liver, and my blood sugar is precariously managed. Side effects of things getting out of control include having parted ways with my gall...

There is a difference between clinging to a false hypothesis and claiming to not understand why a particular process appears to violate the rules of probability; specifically the "switch/stay" decision and what appears to be an asymmetric redistribution of probability. I know the answer to the...

No, because once I won the car I would stop. (Yes, I know that is evasive.) Your problem is whether I am required to play the same door each time. If I am, then you are right. If I am not, my expectation value is 3 cards if I play 10 times, or 10 cars if I play 30 times.

Steps 5 & 6 is where the failure occurs. You start with a million doors, each of which has a small but non-zero probability of being the "YES" door. Your first choice (selecting a door) CANNOT CHANGE THE ODDS. The car is still where it always was. As you reveal the hundreds of thousands of...

Follow-up: Ms. Foxx, the assistant DA, has formally requested her own state's Inspector General, to look into her handling of the Smollett case including her decision, since it appears even to her that some people think something shady was involved. In essence, she is ASKING to be reviewed...

In the final analysis, I have 50-50 odds that the (presumed) pearl is in the one I picked or the one that is left (assuming the odds to be correct). It is a matter of perspective in light of new evidence. The probability of the remaining doors MUST go up symmetrically. There is, by the rules...

When the amount of information in the game changes, the odds have to change. When you pick a door and a different door is revealed as a zonk or as a mediocre non-zonk, the odds of the "good" prize change. Before all of that picking, the odds of the good prize being behind a particular door...

My contention is that your odds SHOULD be 50-50 AFTER you have the second question because NEW INFORMATION has been added - i.e. you no longer worry about the door that got revealed. That NEW choice should be 50-50 if it were not for the host guiding the situation. I have seen the studies that...

I have seen this and vehemently disagree with the conclusion stated for the truly random case. However, there is the issue that the game-show host knows the answer and thus is not making a random statement.

Hell's Bells, Uncle... You could have mentioned this. I wouldn't mind getting into a spamming war with the jerk. I've been known to be pretty good about putting down idiots. (Perhaps because of my personal experience at being one? Who knows?)

I see your point about social pressures, and I don't disagree. I believe it is in part due to people being bombarded with too many concepts that would force them to NOT "judge a book by its cover." For entirely too many people, that is too much effort and they yearn for simpler times. They...

I am reminded of the Tawana Brawley case (you can Google it), which turned out to be a ploy for highlighting the "black" experience in the USA, masterminded (perhaps) by the Rev. Al Sharpton. She claimed rape and degradation by a group of white men, including being smeared with feces. However...

In the sense that she was paid off in cash, probably not. In the sense that a black prosecutor decided to not bring a black man to trial because his crime was to highlight racial injustice, I might infer some impurity in the case. In particular, I believe she should have recused herself IF she...

A good point, Bee. I'm not as close to your Brexit woes so don't see nuances like that. Your comments about falling on your sword and missing remind me of Douglas Adams and the "Hitchhikers" series. In the second volume, he explains how to fly. You throw yourself at the ground - and miss.

Uncle G, that is quite how I feel about the AGW debate in the Access forum. Certain members have their minds made up and simply cannot be bothered to acknowledge how unsettled their "settled science" really is. It is almost like a brainwashed cult member who cannot entertain even the smallest...

Well, that is a matter of interpretation. What actually came out was two parts. First part: No evidence of collusion. To my way of thinking, saying that there was no evidence of that crime IS a form of exoneration. Second part WAS trickier but ... NO obstruction of justice. What WASN'T...

I would guess that if you can imagine a line that says on one side "Broke the law" and on the other side said "Stayed technically legal" that DJT will be right on the inside edge of legal.

Jon, I wouldn't go there without first taking an antacid or a mild analgesic. And at the moment, the thread has diverted itself. I would interpret that newspaper article as INSTANTLY being wrong, biased, or poorly constructed. I would say (at least in the USA) that 100% of the people think...

Not as a statement of arrogance or an attempt at argumentum ad authoritatem, but I'm probably the closest thing this particular forum has to a scientist, though I had to change career direction 30 years ago due to family issues. My field isn't climate science but the math I had to study...

Interesting, Uncle G. Sometimes all you have to do is follow the money. If any of you ever went to south Louisiana for an historic plantation tour, you would note the large number free standing clothes cabinets - chiffoniers and the like. Turns out that back in the time they were built...