February 24, 2016 at 23:10Why do we need probability theory in life
It was under that name that we conducted a webinar - “ Why do we need the theory of probability in life ”.
In the webinar, we did not touch on the “yellow” topics like “ how to win at the casino ” and “ 100% way to get a million without registering and SMS ”.
On the contrary, the more serious ones were affected. Here is the webinar itself:
For example, the statistics industry has more money than the arms, drugs, and people trade combined. One little-known English scientist in the 18th century used life expectancy statistics (the so-called actuarial tables , compiled by Halley, who also discovered Halley's comet) and founded a business that has now become an entire industry, the number one business in the world. And you also participate in it every day, consciously or not, for example, when you go to work.
The idea of a similar mathematical apparatus is used in India: you can buy a ticket from the mafia and ride public transport for free, and the mafia will pay the fines you received. It is called a "haft" and is beneficial to you and the mafia, but not to the state.
The mechanism of the lottery is discussed in detail - how the distribution of funds proceeds and how the game on emotions occurs, when one winner is shown on TV, and millions of losers are not. This idea was gleaned from a speech at TED about erroneous expectations . It also describes the discovery of the law of large numbers and its application now. And looking at the crime map of the country, you can easily see that in some regions there are 3 times less chances to become a victim of crime than in others. The term “crime rate” itself is statistical, it is a quantitative characteristic of crime, and it is worth noting that when such an approach to crime assessment was first introduced in 1832 in France, it caused confusion due to the stability of the data.
More topics covered in the webinar:
By the way, the following fact was used in the announcement of the webinar: in May 2015, Russia lost control of the Progress spacecraft. How to calculate whether the device will fall to land (or to a specific country). Can you give an answer? In our opinion, this is a great example to illustrate the geometric approach for calculating probabilities.
In the webinar, we did not touch on the “yellow” topics like “ how to win at the casino ” and “ 100% way to get a million without registering and SMS ”.
On the contrary, the more serious ones were affected. Here is the webinar itself:
For example, the statistics industry has more money than the arms, drugs, and people trade combined. One little-known English scientist in the 18th century used life expectancy statistics (the so-called actuarial tables , compiled by Halley, who also discovered Halley's comet) and founded a business that has now become an entire industry, the number one business in the world. And you also participate in it every day, consciously or not, for example, when you go to work.
The idea of a similar mathematical apparatus is used in India: you can buy a ticket from the mafia and ride public transport for free, and the mafia will pay the fines you received. It is called a "haft" and is beneficial to you and the mafia, but not to the state.
The mechanism of the lottery is discussed in detail - how the distribution of funds proceeds and how the game on emotions occurs, when one winner is shown on TV, and millions of losers are not. This idea was gleaned from a speech at TED about erroneous expectations . It also describes the discovery of the law of large numbers and its application now. And looking at the crime map of the country, you can easily see that in some regions there are 3 times less chances to become a victim of crime than in others. The term “crime rate” itself is statistical, it is a quantitative characteristic of crime, and it is worth noting that when such an approach to crime assessment was first introduced in 1832 in France, it caused confusion due to the stability of the data.
More topics covered in the webinar:
- how ORT type TV channels rate TV program ratings,
- how a serious attitude to statistics helped to make the Japanese economic miracle (and how it is reflected in the various series “Back to the Future”),
- increased conversion in business and SEO (the conversion itself can be considered as a probability),
- normal distribution by the example of the length of the noses, and as everything that goes beyond 3 sigma becomes the object of fairy tales and television news,
- how Google Translate uses statistics to determine the language of the text.
By the way, the following fact was used in the announcement of the webinar: in May 2015, Russia lost control of the Progress spacecraft. How to calculate whether the device will fall to land (or to a specific country). Can you give an answer? In our opinion, this is a great example to illustrate the geometric approach for calculating probabilities.