Timeline for How to present mathematics to non-mathematicians?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 12, 2020 at 16:32 | comment | added | JoshuaZ | The mathematician/statistician who that was actually about was Abraham Wald en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald who was actually working in the US. I can't seem to find any information about how much of his work was shared with the British, but my guess would be that it would have been. Jordan Ellenberg's "How Not to be Wrong" also has a section discussing Wald's work. | |
| Nov 27, 2010 at 17:41 | comment | added | timur | One can do even better if one has a good estimate on the probability that every square inch of the surface of the plane gets hit with a bullet. The "exact opposite" decision above means they assumed uniform distribution. | |
| Nov 25, 2010 at 1:35 | comment | added | Sean Tilson | also, the planes that were hit in the most essential places were not recovered, or part of the sample. | |
| Nov 25, 2010 at 0:31 | comment | added | The Mathemagician | @Tony,JBL I didn't understand this at first,but it's clear if you think about it: Considering the planes that make it back as a sample from the population of planes in the combat zone,it's clear the only ones that make it back are those whose nonessential regions only got hit. So if you reinforce those regions,there's a far greater probability of the plane continuing to fly then if you do it randomly on the surface of the plane. | |
| Nov 24, 2010 at 14:39 | history | edited | JBL | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Nov 24, 2010 at 14:38 | comment | added | JBL | Or, in other words: the most-damaged places on planes that survive are places that are inessential to flight. | |
| Nov 24, 2010 at 14:25 | comment | added | Tony Huynh | @Qiaochu: I am guessing that the reason has to do with sampling bias. The reason that these planes managed to make it back to base is probably because their undamaged regions are critical for their functioning. So, their undamaged regions should be reinforced. | |
| Nov 24, 2010 at 14:20 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | Why should you do exactly the opposite? | |
| Nov 24, 2010 at 14:11 | comment | added | darij grinberg | I don't think this is what distinguishes mathematics from layman reasoning. It is rather what distinguishes a good model from a bad model. Mathematics takes models as an input. Of course, many mathematicians have some above-average talent at telling good models apart from bad ones, but this is not what mathematics is about. | |
| Nov 24, 2010 at 14:07 | comment | added | Sonia Balagopalan | The Pleasures of Counting by TW Korner has some more nice stories of this kind. | |
| Nov 24, 2010 at 13:49 | history | answered | fedja | CC BY-SA 2.5 |