Science Memes

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Percentages (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 2 weeks ago (25 children)

Having two possible outcomes does not mean it's a 50:50 chance.

"So if I aim the arrow at the 1cm square from 100m away and shoot, I either hit it or I don't. So basically I have a 50% chance of hitting it."

[–] Smokeydope 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Very weird fun fact about arrows/darts and statistics, theres 0% chance of hitting an exact bullseye. You can hit it its possible to throw a perfect bullseye. It just has a probability of zero when mathematically analyzed due to being an infinitesimally small point. Sound like I'm making shit up? Here's the sauce

How can an outcome both be entirely possible and have 0% probability?

Q.E.D

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Key word here is "infinitesimally." Of course if you're calculating the odds of hitting something infinitesimally small you're going to get 0. That's just the nature of infinities. It is impossible to hit an infinitesimally small point, but that's not what a human considers to be a "perfect bullseye." There's no paradox here.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Another lesson I the importance of significant digits, a concept I've had to remind many a young (and sometimes an old) engineer about. An interesting idea along similar lines is that 2 + 2 can equal 5 for significantly large values of 2.

[–] gibmiser 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

What do you mean by significantly large

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago

Depending on how you're rounding, I assume. Standard rounding to whole digits states that 2.4 will round to 2 but 4.8 will round to 5. So 2.4+2.4=4.8 can be reasonably simplified to 2+2=5.

This is part of why it's important to know what your significant digits are, because in this case the tenths digit is a bit load bearing. But, as an example, 2.43 the 3 in the hundredths digit has no bearing on our result and can be rounded or truncated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Also the circumference of the dart tip is not infinitesimally small, so theres a definite chance of it overlapping the 'perfect bullseye' by hitting any number of nearby points.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Oh. That's what they mean. That's dumb lol.

[–] Serinus 4 points 2 weeks ago

You must not be playing on a soft tip board.
Image of a soft tipped dart board.

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