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One hesitates to criticize the great man but, as mmastrac has already pointed out, it's really difficult to parse out a conclusion, especially a straightforward
by billforsternz 2y ago
One hesitates to criticize the great man but, as mmastrac has already pointed out, it's really difficult to parse out a conclusion, especially a straightforward probability estimate.
I was hoping for something like; "The probability of these apparently fake numbers being genuine is in the range 1/1500 to 1/130,000, depending on what other assumptions we make".
Maybe that's impossible in the same way that talking about the improbability of a shuffle revealing some specific series of cards says nothing about the reality of one such sequence after it's revealed.
- seventytwo 2y agoThat’s exactly the conclusion, except it’s 1 in 100 million. You’d need to run that election 100 million times to expect an outcome with vote totals that landed on percentages that all rounded to exactly 0.1.
- billforsternz 2y agoThanks, I wish that was stated a little more clearly is the source document.
- cassianoleal 2y agoThat's not quite it though, is it? It more like, if you run that election 100 million times, it's very likely that these kinds of results would happen only once. That once could be in the very first time you ran the elections, it could be in the 100 millionth, or anywhere in between.
- seventytwo 2y agoYes. That’s what “expected outcome” means.
- cassianoleal 2y agoI was responding to > You’d need to run that election 100 million times You don't. It might happen the very first time. It's as probable to happen this time as it is in any of the other 100 million times.