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by tialaramex
2230 days ago
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I don't like to leave holes like this in people's comprehension. It's OK if people don't end up with an intuitive feeling for how relatively unlikely different things that don't actually happen are, but I want them to be aware of that category as distinct from things which can't happen because the type of argument needed is different. The air molecules in the room you're in can't all gather in one corner because that's not possible, it's forbidden by conservation rules. But they won't gather in two opposite corners only because that's so tremendously unlikely, it would be allowed by conservation but statistically it's ludicrous. The same is true at the opposite end of the spectrum. Almost all real numbers are normal (in all bases) but the nature of "Almost all" in mathematics is different in an important way from "All" and I want people to grasp this difference when I'm discussing properties of numbers. It definitely is not true that all real numbers are normal, you probably rarely think about any normal numbers at all. |
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I agree. I think this wording would be better than in my previous comment, what do you think?