That’s the joke, mate.
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So, why is this strange story included in his (sic) book? The answer is that it represents a gamble that’s a little different than the other gambles that appear.
First, it’s probably safe to say that if the story is true, then it’s almost a certainty, if she lived long enough, that it would be determined that Joan was not a man. This means that the idea she was gambling that her secret would not be discovered would not be true since it would be discovered (what?). Well, maybe not.
On page 11 in “Part One: Initial Ideas” in the sub-chapter on “Gambling” we wrote the following:
Finally, for completeness, there’s one other aspect of gambling we want to cover here. It’s the idea that lots of gambling events, when combined, are no longer gambling.
and that’s exactly what we have here. While it’s probably a certainty, again as long as Pope Joan lives long enough, that it will be discovered that she’s a woman, there’s a good chance that this won’t happen that day (or week, or month). That is, in the short term there is virtually no probability that this will be the case. Consequently, here’s a good example of the expectation over time beginning to dominate the standard deviation, while in the short run, the result would be more dependent on the standard deviation. Stated another way, this is an example of someone making a number of short time gambles which become a non-gamble over time, and this is the “one possible exception” that we mentioned early in this book.
Finally, some in depth analysis.
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My Mom never fails to try to get me to read the latest “Killing X” book by Bill O’Reilly. I assume this must be what they’re like, but with less “type-os”.
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That sounds like a type of cereal enjoyed by only a selectric few people.
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Oh, that’s a source? I thought that was one of the “foolish gambles”.
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Maybe there’s been no book in recent memory that refers to native Americans as “American Indians” repeatedly and often
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He doesn’t even cite Wikipedia correctly in any style.
Hahaha…I hadn’t realized he was using that term.
So in Roman times it was a legislated capital offence to have a baby fall out of your vagina while you’re trying to mount a horse?
This is really circular. Like, her gamble isn’t trying to fool everyone for eternity, it’s only for as long as she lives (presumably). So it’s weird to qualify it with “as long as [she] lives long enough” when that precisely is the gamble! It’s kind of like saying you’ll eventually outlive your retirement funds if you live long enough. No shit, that’s the whole point.
Going from “virtually no probability” in the short term to almost absolute certainty in the long term implies a very long term to me, but I suppose it depends on what “virtually no probability” means. Besides that, I’m not sure I get what
is supposed to convey. What an odd turn of phrase for statistical parlance. Perhaps the simplest approach to model the “survivability” of not being found out is by using an exponential distribution which, by definition, has equal mean and standard deviation (and also the memoryless property). If he’s making a point about convergence then there’s better terminology for that.
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Back when I first started I bought one sklansky written poker book and it alone crushed the games at the time and I think it was a limit book and I was only playing no limit. Gosh I miss the good old days. Always regretted not just dropping out of school and full timing it when the $ was flowing anyway.
Smart/Dumb is pretty subjective. If you don’t like them no matter what they are dumb of course.
It looks like Mason is on the verge of making a breakthrough in both mathematics and history. He will coin it the Law of Large Number of Gambling Events.
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I’ll bet you a milly that man walks on Mars in my lifetime.
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Probably just a testament to how soft the games were back in the day.
I’m really on the fence about this. They explicitly don’t want to read books that piss them off and one of the hosts is part Native American so the Andy Jakcson stuff will piss him off. I feel like if someone gifts them two copies of the book and explains the context of it there’s like a 5% they will make an episode about it. Maybe it’s worth it.
As an aside, I want to recommend the IDEOAT podcast to everyone here because it’s fucking great (https://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/). Flywlf recommended it to me and I humbly pass on the baton to all of you. The Bill O’Reiley episode is wild. Bill O’reiley double-Mary Sue’s himself into his own books and kills a CNN coworker with a spoon. This man has issues.
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I’m not sure I understand what the moral of that particular passage is, but it feels like Mason is casting his net rather wide: if he wants to learn more about the medieval mindset, he need only visit his own forum.
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Don’t really know what to post that would both be funny and not sound like I’m trolling. If I think of something I will…