2024 LC Thread

One for every year they were together. How romantic.

I didn’t actually read anything.

68 guns

They didn’t kill him, so maybe they were telling the truth.

Guess the ethnicity!

Legend

Ordered my son a new iPhone for his 16th birthday. Was delivered at 6:08PM, at 6:13PM a guy showed up, looking at his phone, went directly to where the phone was delivered, snatched it and took off.

Thanks, Biden.

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This is the type of story that could go viral and get like $100k in go fund me donations.

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I was in the house at the time and could have easily seen it, gone outside, and then who knows what happens. I’m sure the iPhone thief is much much much more prepared for that kind of situation than me.

The inside man must be at fedex right?

I would pursue this with FedEx/Apple/the cops, whoever.

Ok, going back to this. Can someone ELI5 why the random number generator has to spit out numbers in a Gaussian distribution. Won’t any continuous distribution where all options have nonzero probability of selection work?

I had the same thing happen to me when my work sent me a phone. Only time I’ve ever been porch-pirated in 10 years. I assume it was an inside job, except I think mine was UPS.

The more I think about that problem, the less I understand it.

For all we know the range of values that will be on the two cards is -34,999 to -33,555. How is a gaussian distribution (centered on zero?) going to help with that?

Doesn’t a gaussian random number generator centered on zero also assume the possible range of card values is centered on zero? And if that’s the case, then just pick again if the first value is negative. Although I’m sure that can’t be right because then the problem would be trivial.

I do feel like gaussian has to be the key. But they don’t go to any lengths to explain why.

Just gotta make sure to call him a filthy immigrant

I don’t think the normal distribution is necessary. Here’s how I would explain my understanding of the solution.
a is the number on the first revealed slip
b is the number on the second slip
r is the random number from the distribution

There are six possible orderings of the numbers
1 rab
2 arb
3 abr
4 rba
5 bra
6 bar

In cases 2 and 5, the solution algorithm leads to the correct answer,

Cases 1 and 4 happen with equal probability. In case 1 the algorithm leads to the wrong answer and in case 4 the algorithm leads to the correct answer.

Likewise, cases 3 and 6 happen with equal probability. In case 3, the algorithm leads to the correct answer and in case 6 the algorithm leads to the wrong answer.

So, cases 1, 3, 4, 6 wash out to a coin flip. As long as the random function has a chance of getting r between a and b, this method will lead to a better than 50/50 chance of being correct.

How do you know the precise times especially the time the thief showed up?

does the packaging make it obvious that it is a phone?

Probably Ring camera or similar

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I agree with Hired_Goons. I don’t think Gaussian is important. But it’s in there, so I assume that there is something I’m not understanding.

I have also been porch pirated once. It was an Instant Pot

Yes you were right above, Gaussian works but is only one possible choice. (I had a feeling specifying it in the solution makes the explanation more confusing…)