I have found another really good book. This one is called The Black Swan. It is not connected to the recent popular movie. It was written in 2007 by Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is about the impact of the improbable. 9-11-2001, for example, was a Black Swan that has had a huge impact on our lives. Taleb is a maverick thinker who is witty and irreverent.
Here is a math problem from the book. I gathered Greg, Jon, Sara and Kim to get their thoughts on the problem. A person has a coin. One side is heads, and the other side is tails. The coin is to be flipped 100 times. The first 99 times the coin ends up showing heads. What will it be on the 100th flip?
Sara said it would be tails (Sara fantasizes more than anyone I have ever known). Kim said a hobo would come up and snatch the coin away from the fool who keeps flipping it, apparently unaware that the coin has value! Jon said the coin should be spent, not flipped. He further added that there was something fishy going on here, and that he expected it would again be heads. Greg agreed, saying that the person who has been tricked is going to hire a hit man and go after that trickster!
What is your prediction?
4 comments:
The coin has equal chances for heads or tails, irrespective of the history of past flips.
Jeffro,
That is exactly what my 19-year-old stepson Erik said. Ironically, Erik is training to be a deisel mechanic.
Deisel? No, that aint right! It is diesel!
I'm with Sara.
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