Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 10, 10:36 pm, "
wrote:
On Jul 10, 12:59 pm, Scott wrote:
On Jul 10, 1:29 pm, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:21:47 -0700 (PDT), Scott
wrote:
The odds for any given rider using a steel frame is not
1 in 10 or 1 in 100 or whatever. It's 50/50.
Is this a joke?
No. It's really quite binary. Either a rider IS or IS NOT riding a
steel frame. Any attempt at bringing in the odds based on what a
sampling of riders may or may not ride may be relevant to you deciding
whether or not it's likely that a rider may be using a particular
frame, but... for any given rider, it is as simple as IS or IS NOT.
So, when you mis-attribute the likelyhood of a given rider riding a
steel frame as far less likely than that (like your 1 in 1000 odds)
and then try to apply that to the 180 riders at the start of the Tour
and come up with something absurd like 1 in 1,000,000 or less, you
aren't really applying the proper probability. It makes your argument
look stronger to someone who doesn't understand odds, but it's not
valid.
Consider the question of whether RBR Chief Statistician
Robert Chung just threw up in his mouth a little. There
are only two possible outcomes, but the odds I would
place on the two outcomes are not 50/50.
Ben
Odds aren't even. That's why they call them odds.
That's odd.
-ilan
|