3 ms·
I think he's defining a round number as, for some precision Y, X number of consecutive most significant digits are 0. e.g. for a precision = 8 number, its "rou
by arnogau 2y ago
I think he's defining a round number as, for some precision Y, X number of consecutive most significant digits are 0.
e.g. for a precision = 8 number, its "round" when the last 5 digits are 0, so like 32.300000 would be round.
The probabilities of round vs non round are pretty skewed. There are far fewer round numbers (for reasonable definitions) than there are non round numbers.
- ithkuil 2y agoNot all numbers come out equally as likely. Round numbers are more likely to be picked by humans (or at least that's the argument)
- raincole 2y agoThat's why I said we need to know: > 2. Assuming it's rigged, how likely it's rigged in a way that the percentage is precisely XX.X% But I didn't realize he wrote a blog post about it. He actually addressed everything I listed (and more) in detail: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-ii-the-venezuelan-presidential-election/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-... TL;DR: Yes, we need to know all these priori probabilities to get the exact answer. He made an assumption about them.