Wanted: Statistician

Richard

Richard

Final Approach
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Ack...city life
Not saying anything about Scott, but he makes the claim that he almost set a distance record (see Leonid meteor thread)

Given: among all the hams in the world, include all the astromoners, in all the web forums, he walks into this joint.

Solve: what are the odds that we would have such an illustrious member here?
 
...deleted my post..

I will be talking to you in private soon.
 
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hey, I have no reason not to believe Scott - and especially after reading his thread. (my thread above was tongue in cheek, hope it was taken that way).
 
woodstock said:
the odds are clearly astromonical.
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Astromonica? Is that what they call oral gratification in the Space Shuttle?

:goofy: Sorry, just can't help being a smartazz
 
Why bother with a ststistician? Just dream up whatever answer you want. That is how McNamara justified building the USS America conventionally powered after the USS Enterprise. Guess which one is still in service.
 
TMetzinger said:
Astromonica? Is that what they call oral gratification in the Space Shuttle?

:goofy: Sorry, just can't help being a smartazz
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someone else was being a smartazz too... :D
 
All: I am aware that the words I chose were ambiguous and did not convey my exact meaning as well as I would like. To that end, I believe a clarification is in order.

My only intent was to discover what the odds are in that we have here at POA a man who has come close to holding a world record. Such an achievement is in itself unique and noteworthy. My interpretation of Scott's words was that he missed the record by just a small bit. That Scott is also on this board out of what must be millions of such online forums (and I have met Scott at 6Y9) implies such great odds which are immeasureable to me, hence my request for someone to calculate the occurence. I apologize for creating the perception that I thought Scott was being less the genuine.
 
Richard said:
My only intent was to discover what the odds are in that we have here at POA a man who has come close to holding a world record. Such an achievement is in itself unique and noteworthy. My interpretation of Scott's words was that he missed the record by just a small bit. That Scott is also on this board out of what must be millions of such online forums (and I have met Scott at 6Y9) implies such great odds which are immeasureable to me, hence my request for someone to calculate the occurence. I apologize for creating the perception that I thought Scott was being less the genuine.
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Uhh.. You can add up any chain of events and say "WOW THE ODDS OF THIS HAPPENING ARE AMAZING". That's because they are. This world is full of random chance. Things never happen the same way twice. The more you keep adding onto the chain the smaller the odds get. You made the chain pretty damn long. There are events that I have experienced that were probably unlikely. What's the odds of a guy experiencing what I may have and being a member of htis forum and meeting you in person? Small. I'm sure there are people on this forum that have all came close to busting a record of some type. There is a long ways from close and having it though. Not only that Scott wasn't even bragging about it. He was just saying what he knows about bouncing the signals. It's a fairly common thing to do in the amatuer radio world. Which is kind of like the pilot world-- It's not very big.

You can't just calculate the likelyhood of this. It's a statistic that means nothing that no one cares about. What's the deal?
 
Richard said:
All: I am aware that the words I chose were ambiguous and did not convey my exact meaning as well as I would like. To that end, I believe a clarification is in order.

My only intent was to discover what the odds are in that we have here at POA a man who has come close to holding a world record. Such an achievement is in itself unique and noteworthy. My interpretation of Scott's words was that he missed the record by just a small bit. That Scott is also on this board out of what must be millions of such online forums (and I have met Scott at 6Y9) implies such great odds which are immeasureable to me, hence my request for someone to calculate the occurence. I apologize for creating the perception that I thought Scott was being less the genuine.
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I think Jesse has an important point. Odds are about prediction. You're using them for postdiction. The best example I know was given by Feynman. You're driving down the freeway and you see a license plate that says RTY143. Wow! What are the chances of that!

The unlikely thing would be for you to predict that you were going to find an amazing guy like Scott on the board and then find him. Finding him first and then trying to calculate the odds doesn't really work out.

I have no idea if that made any sense.

Chris
 
cwyckham said:
...
I have no idea if that made any sense.

Chris
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It made exqusitely elegant sense.

Thanks!
 
SCCutler said:
I'm tired of my old sig.
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Me too! haha. well put chris. Scott is a cool guy, we need to hang out more! I need to hear stories from early space shuttle days and whatever else you've got up your sleeves.
 
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