Dave

That is the entire point of probability. You cannot predict random variables. You can only calculate the possibility of a particular event occurring.

Use Mathematica. It'll work out the answer extremely quickly. (I can't think about a mathematical way of doing it atm). I get an answer of 400 precisely.

None that I know of. Surely you must be able to see that [imath]f(\pi) = \pi + \sin\pi[/imath]. Since [imath]\sin\pi = 0[/imath], clearly [imath]f(\pi) = \pi[/imath].

Just thought I'd let you all know about the Beyond Einstein webcast. It's part of the celebration of the centenery of the theory of relativity, and it looks like it's going to be pretty good. So enjoy

Care to offer some reasoning?

I feel that I should probably step in and answer some questions on this, before it gets bogged down with controversy and the like. SFN attracts a lot of people who want to post their theories, and that's fine. However, most of these people usually end up ignoring the huge gaping logical holes in those theories, instead choosing to believe that they are the next Einstein with new radical ideas. After a while, the staff gets pretty much sick of reading this and I suspect that most of the community does as well. Indeed, it's just not what SFN is all about, and so most members coming along proclaiming that they have theories that are clearly right, and moreover will not listen to reason, end up getting banned. This ban is still under review, but this is the basic premise for it. I'm not going to go into further details because they're not warranted, but please just bear in mind that if you've been warned and you're not happy about it, to PM the staff member that warned you, or one of the admins if you don't want to do that. Barring that, you can always e-mail me. The reason is not that we don't want you to talk about it in public, rather that it's a lot easier to hold a conversation on the matter in private. For the time being I'm going to close this thread. It doesn't really serve much purpose in terms of information.

Well, that's more his nationality, but he was a white male Caucasian as depicted by every picture ever drawn of him

The trouble is it's very hard for a computer system to distinguish between tailgating and normal travelling. It's a very compelling case to keep police on the roads instead of having computers monitoring every single move. I have to say that I couldn't live in a country where everything (public, at least) was monitored by an overlooking AI, as suggested by Mokele. There is just no tolerance that way - at least with police, they have the power to show a small amount of compassion.

Sorry, but isn't this the most obvious question ever?

Just to let you know that I'm thinking about the problem. It sort of makes sense and I'm unable to find a counter-example, so it's beginning to look true. Did you get anywhere with this?

I'll chip in and extend my gratitude to the staff and experts, since they do a brilliant job that does take up an extraordinary amount of time some days. My thanks go to all of you guys for posting here - SFN wouldn't be the same without it

I'm sorry if this takes the discussion off on a bit of a tangent, but some of you in the UK may be aware of a scheme called ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition). ANPR equipped CCTV devices are placed along a road or motorway, allowing the police to check the numberplate of every vehicle that passes by. In the process, any cars marked as stolen can be flagged up and an officer deployed to intercept and detain the car. At the moment, there are in the region of a few thousand cameras set up at strategic points; e.g. on motorway bridges, alongside roads, etc. Now, it's recently been announced that the guys behind this plan to expand the system, and place cameras every 400 yards on the motorways, as well as have ANPR cameras in car parks and other strategic locations. The consequence of this is that vehicles will be able to be tracked - moreover, they want to keep the records for up to 2 years. Frankly, I'm getting to the end of my tether with the whole thing. It's like one thing after another with the UK roads. Firstly, we have to pay road tax and an extortionate price for fuel. Then, on top of that, the government introduces speed cameras and expands the scheme to make a nice little earner on the side (this alone I could rant on and on about for years). And now, ANPR to track everywhere we go. The idea is absurd. Setting aside, for a moment, the immense technical difficulties, there is the issue of abuse. For example, who is going to have access to this system? It's not unreasonable to assume that an organised gang could get access via a perfectly respectible officer (by extortion or some other method). The database could be used to track the routes of security vans, and moreover help the gang to take down multiple shipments at any one time. As far as I can see, it's a complete and utter waste of billions of pounds of taxpayers money that could go into far better causes.

Moved to a better place, since it is a valid question after all

Riiight. I suggest you come up with some empirical evidence to back your claims up, otherwise I'll just close the thread

Looks like this site might have some relevant information. Just do a quick google for "excel histogram".

Another slightly more... unrealistic option is something called the nuclear pulse engine. Well, it's not so much an engine as a crude way of travelling via nuclear fission explosions. Basically you fit a great big lead plate to the back of your spaceship. The idea is to chuck nukes out the back of the spaceship and detonate them in fairly close proximity to the spaceship. The force of the explosion contacts the ablative lead and you get a fair bit of acceleration. Clearly there are some problems with this - making sure your entire crew doesn't die from radiation poisoning, for a start - but it's a good idea in theory

I've merged this into the stickied thread as to make space in the forum. As Capn said, if people start talking about it, and moreover it becomes a topic meriting a forum by itself, then we'll create it. Until then there isn't really much point

I have The Joy of Pi sitting on my bookshelf. It's quite a nice little book, as you rightly said What else? There's a couple of boring undergraduate analysis texts (Numbers and Functions, RP Burn - even the title sounds dull) but I do have another excellent book for any first year undergraduates called "The Foundations of Mathematics" by Stewart and Tall (again). It's quite nice for those who are just starting a degree and helped me a bit during my first term.

Hey, I'm going to review the post myself. The problem that we're having at the moment is that a lot of the ID threads are being inundated with people not willing to reason properly, and hence it's taking up a lot of time and causing us a lot of grief just to sort them out. But, as I say, I will review the thread and get back to you. (Next time it might be better to send a PM or post in Suggestions/Comments, since I just don't see things in Psuedo-science all that often )

I've read that book. It's really rather good, and for those that haven't touched Lattice Theory it's ideal for starters

I think you may want to use something called the multinomial expansion. Basically, the multinomial theorem says: [math](x_1 + \cdots + x_k)^n = \sum_{\stackrel{n_1, \dots, n_k \geq 0}{n_1 + \cdots + n_k = n}} \frac{n!}{n_1! \, n_2! \cdots n_k!} \, a_1^{n_1} \cdots a_k^{n_k}[/math] You can find out more about it at MathWorld.

Yes, unfortunately you get a circular argument in this case. There are different ways of approaching the problem, though

Having said that, I've taken another look outside and it now appears that the fog has gone. The bad news is it means we'll get a bad frost tonight. Oh well