Infinity Question

[Raziaar]

That game would have terrible house odds. They'd never allow it!

 

[Dan]

That game is almost exactly roulette, except in that case you control the amount of the bet (so you can choose to double it every time you lose), and you win on red or black rather than heads or tails. It's called the Martingale system.

The only limiting factor is that you probably don't have infinite money and doubling every bet leads to an exponentially increasing sum. It's also the reason the table has a betting limit.

 

[Raziaar]

That game is almost exactly roulette, except in that case you control the amount of the bet (so you can choose to double it every time you lose), and you win on red or black rather than heads or tails. It's called the Martingale system.

The only limiting factor is that you probably don't have infinite money and doubling every bet leads to an exponentially increasing sum. It's also the reason the table has a betting limit.

Well I know the martingale system, but from what I read the way he described it is that it's the bank that is doubling up the money to be won, not the player doubling up the money paid to win to recoup his losses. So the player could bet 1 dollar each time and have the chance to win one dollar, two dollars, four dollars, eight dollars, sixteen dollars, etc etc while only betting 1 dollar each time.

I guess I'll have to reread what he posted.

People who follow the martingale though without huge bankrolls of tens of thousands of dollars will quickly find themselves raped.

 

[delusional]

Spontaneous nuclear decay is not affected by external factors: anything, including air pressure, temperature and the surround species of subatomic particles. Nuclear decay is not affected by any interaction with the surroundings. The nucleus simply decay whenever it likes to. At the time of half-life, there is 50% for the nucleus to go decayed; but there is always no predicting whether the nucleus will decay or not, no matter how ideal your measurement is.

Incorrect. Nuclear decay is affected by solar flares and the earth-sun distance.

http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/08/29/1227239.shtml

 

[bbson john]

Incorrect. Nuclear decay is affected by solar flares and the earth-sun distance.

http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/08/29/1227239.shtml

True? I found the same article in a site called "answersingensis" as well. It is probably just another example bad science. This extraordinary short article, with less then 1000 words, is not backed up with scientific data and sound theory. You can even see there is some scientific mistakes or ambiguity within the article. The variation of nuclear decay is either falsified or in a very primitive stage of research.

You cannot just Google the web or randomly browse Wikipedia for back up information for your idea. There are a bunch of people fabricate false scientific evidence for the sake of religious and commercial reasons. Genuine articles can be identified from those scums by viewing the articles' depth in term of scientific knowledge, sufficiency of precise data and whether they are in line with the modern science theories. More importantly, on which site the article was posted is essential as well, like, whether it is posted on trustworthy site like the "Newscientist" or just a random physics blog.

If one takes every science scums as truth, he or she may take shit like cold fusion or intelligent design as truth as well.

 

[Dan]

Logical fallacy alert. Ad hominem.

When physicists say that nuclear decay is dependent only on the element, that is a relative statement, meaning that nothing we can do can affect it in a way that we can measure. But it is certainly influenced by its environment, if only for the very basic nature of the universe that every atom is interconnected by a web of forces. It just so happens that all of the dominant forces are the ones in the nucleus, but it doesn't mean that the nucleus exists in an isolated vacuum separate from the rest of the universe.

 

[bbson john]

Logical fallacy alert. Ad hominem.

When physicists say that nuclear decay is dependent only on the element, that is a relative statement, meaning that nothing we can do can affect it in a way that we can measure. But it is certainly influenced by its environment, if only for the very basic nature of the universe that every atom is interconnected by a web of forces. It just so happens that all of the dominant forces are the ones in the nucleus, but it doesn't mean that the nucleus exists in an isolated vacuum separate from the rest of the universe.

Of course, the breakdown of a nucleus is affected by external factor. When a thermal neutron comes in contact with a radioactive nucleus, it breaks down the nucleus. But this is no longer called a spontaneous nuclear decay, but rather a fission reaction or a fusion reaction. Every atom is interconnected? True. Every movement of an atom is due to the perturbation of an external atom? Merely your conjecture. Your faith has nothing to do with the current well-developed scientific theory.

Also, I didn't say that spontaneous nuclear decay being impervious to external factors is a inalterable fact. You can convince me if you quoted a peer-viewed article and a trustworthy science journal. But one can't convince anyone with website like "slashdot.org".

And your argument is invalid if you just randomly suggested your opponent in the debate committed logical fallacy. I am an open-minded person, but I really can't see where did I make an ad hominem argument. Please point it out.

 

[Sheepo]

Hey, hey, you know what?

You're all a bunch of NERDS.

 

[bbson john]

Hey, hey, you know what?

You're all a bunch of NERDS.

Arguing on the Internet is frigging hilarious.

/go left4dead

 

[delusional]

True? I found the same article in a site called "answersingensis" as well. It is probably just another example bad science. This extraordinary short article, with less then 1000 words, is not backed up with scientific data and sound theory. You can even see there is some scientific mistakes or ambiguity within the article. The variation of nuclear decay is either falsified or in a very primitive stage of research.

You cannot just Google the web or randomly browse Wikipedia for back up information for your idea. There are a bunch of people fabricate false scientific evidence for the sake of religious and commercial reasons. Genuine articles can be identified from those scums by viewing the articles' depth in term of scientific knowledge, sufficiency of precise data and whether they are in line with the modern science theories. More importantly, on which site the article was posted is essential as well, like, whether it is posted on trustworthy site like the "Newscientist" or just a random physics blog.

If one takes every science scums as truth, he or she may take shit like cold fusion or intelligent design as truth as well.

Well that's because answeringenesis are idiots. The suns affect on the nuclear decay in in the isotopes it affects are within percent error, and the earth-sun distance is like a ordinary sine wave, it doesn't change in the long run. So its almost a non-issue.

The point is that the environment has an effect on nuclear decay. It doesn't decay just because it feels like it.

 

[delusional]

Also, I didn't say that spontaneous nuclear decay being impervious to external factors is a inalterable fact. You can convince me if you quoted a peer-viewed article and a trustworthy science journal. But one can't convince anyone with website like "slashdot.org".

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0808/0808.3156.pdf

Happy now?

 

[bbson john]

My point is that the sun-nuclei relation result may not be true, rather than whether the error is within the acceptable half-life values.

This is the complete, neutral understanding of the mentioned result.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/38341/title/Half-life_(more_or_less)

As you can see, the result is neither:1. repeated in laboratory, nor; 2. explained theoretically. Results like this, thought appealing, should not be taken as scientific fact. It is because systematic error of the experiment may lead to such interesting result. If the same result is measured repeatedly throughout several big laboratories across a few nations, I am convinced. Until now, we should not see sun-nuclei relation as fact. So you cannot judge the contemporary physics theory with this data.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

In the best of my mind I would say that both are possible - but very much unlikely.

Yeah, that's what I think.
I just voted stupid because I love you.

 

[theotherguy]

Well I know the martingale system, but from what I read the way he described it is that it's the bank that is doubling up the money to be won, not the player doubling up the money paid to win to recoup his losses. So the player could bet 1 dollar each time and have the chance to win one dollar, two dollars, four dollars, eight dollars, sixteen dollars, etc etc while only betting 1 dollar each time.

I guess I'll have to reread what he posted.

People who follow the martingale though without huge bankrolls of tens of thousands of dollars will quickly find themselves raped.

Actually, the player bets a fixed amount, and the house doubles the amount to be won each time they flip a heads. When they flip a tails, they stop the game and you walk away with the winnings.

The question is asking what you would be willing to bet if the house asked for it. Say, if the house asked for $50, would you be willing to play the game? What if they asked $10?

It would take 4 flips to win your $10 back (you would win 2^4 or 16 dollars), and the probability of getting this many heads is 1/16 (or 6.25%). It would take 6 flips to win your $50 back, and so on.

However, since the payment rises to infinity, and the probability shrinks to infinity at the same rate, the math works out that the amount you should mathematically expect to win is infinite.

No casino would ever play a game like this, because they could lose a significant amount of money. If 1024 people played this game a year, at least 1 of them should win $1024. There would be a 50% chance that one of them would win $2048. There would be a 25% chance that one of them won $4098. There would be a %12.5 chance that one of them won $8196, and so on. In fact, the more the game is played, the higher the net loss the casino would take. It is even possible that an exceedingly lucky person could bankrupt the casino in a single run.

These are not odds that casinos like. Generally, casinos like games where the expected winnings are very close to zero, if not negative.

 

[Dan]

So how do you lose money on this game? Tails you win, heads they put up more money for you to win. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

And to your last comment, a casino would never play a game where their expected winnings were zero. It's not worth their time.

 

[Dan]

However, since the payment rises to infinity, and the probability shrinks to infinity at the same rate, the math works out that the amount you should mathematically expect to win is infinite.

I am assuming that "probability shrinks to infinity" was just a typo, or that you meant it infinitely shrinks towards 0. But even so, if the denominator approached 0 at the same rate that the numerator approached infinity, you would approach a finite limit. So if the initial payout is a. Then the expected payout for any particular number of dice rolls can be written as P=a*2^(x-1)/x. The expected payout would be the summation of this series from x=1 to infinity, or you could take the integral.

Another key part of this problem that you failed to mention was that for it to make any sense as a game, the initial payout would have to be $1 or something less than the bet. Without mentioning that, most people would assume at the payout is equal to the bet as it usually is in simple chance games.

 

[The Gestapo]

Right, I have had enough of these "infinity posts", so I will solve it once and for all. Infinity is only placievable in the 10th dimension of reality - where everything is possible and imaginable is covered. The world we live in, the 4th dimension, can only cover linearity. The best way to think of it is as if we lived in the 10th dimension - we could read this post, or we could not - or this website might never exist; infinite possibilities.

 

[Letters]

The correct answer to any problem involving infinity is NO ONE ****ING KNOWS AND NO ONE EVER ****ING WILL SO SHUT THE **** UP ABOUT IT.

You all fail.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Thats what she said.