this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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...and I don't know which possibility is the least worrying

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[–] BallShapedMan 272 points 6 months ago (29 children)

Don't be fooled by randomness. Randomness comes in clumps. For example if you flipped a thousand coins every day for a year and measured how each one predicted the stock market, heads for up, tails for down, at the end of the year you'll likely have one coin that far out performs the average. But would you use that coin to determine your investment strategy the next year?

And yeah Boeing is now killing people outside of their planes.

[–] HongoBongo 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Crunching the numbers in your example, there's a 92% chance no coin does better than 55% correct. Randomness happens, but the law of large numbers usually refers to much larger numbers than 1000, and there aren't 1000 huge companies being investigated right now. I think suspicion is warranted here

[–] BallShapedMan 1 points 6 months ago

You're saying my intentionally over simplified example to get a point across wasn't perfect? Amazing analysis....

Do you go by the nickname Captain Obvious with your friends?

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