> The inspection paradox in renewal theory that you linked ... is an instance of the inspection paradox described in the article I think that's debatable. The

> The inspection paradox in renewal theory that you linked ... is an instance of the inspection paradox described in the article I think that's debatable. The standard definition of the IP is intimately bound to random processes, and there is nothing random about class sizes. So while I do see the similarity, I think that saying that the class-size example is an instance of the IP is at best misleading because it discards an essential feature of the actual IP, namely, randomness. It might be useful as a pedagogical tool, i.e. "here is an analogous result in a deterministic system" but to say that they are the same is very misleading IMHO. Here is the relevant quote from the Wikipedia article on renewal theory: "The resolution of the paradox is that our sampled distribution at time t is size-biased (see sampling bias)" So the resolution of both "paradoxes" is the same, i.e. they are both examples of sample bias. But that doesn't mean that the problems are the same, or that one is an instance of the other.