A weird thing I’ve noticed about “correlation does not equal causation” is that some people actually end up thinking it means “correlation does equal not causation” - i.e. if A and B are correlated then A does not cause B (and B does not cause A). A more accurate expression would be “correlation does not necessarily equal causation”.
If the horizon of the universe is like the horizon of a blackhole then the energy loss through Hawking radiation through the converstion e=mc^2 simply implies that mass is lost from the universe over time. If we extrapolate out this energy/mass loss over time for every mass in the universe then the distance between the surfaces of each grow as a relative change with the exponentially decreasing mass over time, directly correlating the dark phenomena we observe as a geometric quantum event.
I don’t like this comic because the frequentist statistician is operating with an effective n=1. You’d ask the detector 1000 more times, and use those results to get your answer.
The frequentist is unable to insert pre-conceived biases. Both will converge on the real answer if they repeat the experiment enough, but the bias being what it is, the Sun may indeed go nova on the necessary time.
Missing: any sort of physicist who will tell them both that the forward model says that the sun won’t explode for a few billion years, and so far that model hasn’t been wrong.
Too small to supernova and black hole, yes. But large enough to have a decent boom. Probably at least red giant, then a nova (explosion casting off outer layers) leaving a white dwarf remnant.
If I’m around by then, my model of medical science progress is wrong ;)
E: I’m wrong. That casting off of the outer gas envelope is not a nova. It’s just a death throe of some sort.
Minor correction: in a few billion years our sun will expand into its red giant death phase.
Also: our star can't go nova by our understanding of astrophysics. If it actually can, then we might need to throw out a lot of astrophysics, including predictions on when our star will expand.
Also also: the odds of the dice giving double 6s is MUCH higher than our sun going nova at any point in time even if it could go nova and was overdue.
Ah, gotcha. I tried learning Bayesian probability once and failed utterly. One of the only classes I just barely passed (stat was the other). My brain just barely computes it.
(1) the sun went nova (vanishingly small chance) and machine rolled truth (prob 35/36) – the joint probability of this (the product) is near zero
OR
(2) sun didn’t go nova (prob of basically one) and machine rolled lie (prob 1/36) – joint prob near 1/36
Think of joint probability as the total likelihood. It is much more likely we are in scenario 2 because the total likelihood of that event (just under 1/36) is astronomically higher than the alternative (near zero)
I’m skipping stuff but hopefully my words make clear what they math doesn’t always
There’s various technicalities of how and where Beyesian statistics apply to the world but I really interpreted it as meaning “if the world is ending then it doesn’t matter and if not then I’m up $50”. The Beyesian is just ruthlessly practical.
That is definitely not the joke. The joke is that the frequentist approach gives you a clearly nonsensical conclusion, because the prior probability of the sun exploding is extremely small.
Not only that, but there’s a higher chance of the detector lying than the Sun supernova-ing, so it’s probably a false positive. Yes I did just read some paragraphs from 3–4 Wikipedia articles.
Seeing the edit, yes, but that is also wrong. As the first line of the link says, radiation therapy uses ionizing radiation and not microwaves
It is possible to use microwaves for treating cancer (see www.bmc.org/content/microwave-ablation), but the two aforementioned methods do not use them (with the caveat that both “chemotherapy” and “radiation therapy” are very broad categories)
science_memes
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.