Natural Science Forum / Physics / Particle Physics / March 2007

Do you mean the dice are fixed?

Let me ask you two questions: if you flipped a coin a thousand times,
what is the probable distribution of it landing heads-up or tails-up? In
what order will the coil land heads or tails?

Now call it and flip it once.

This is an example of predictable randomness. Which way the coin lands
is random each individual time, but over the course of many coin-flips,
it's highly predictable.

If you think that this is the case you will be able to predict the
outcome of the next throw on a roulette wheel.

Have a go, but risk your own money.

The reason why the casino owners get rich is that they have a slight
edge - if the ball lands on zero, they win. They can't predict *which*
throws will land on zero, but they *can* predict that the outcome of a
thousand throws will give them a slight advantage.

It is precisely because the individual events are completely
unpredictable that the outcome of many such events is highly
predictable. This is what makes quantum physics the most acurate model
of any system in any branch of science. Take away the underlying
randomness and you can no longer make acurate predictions.

If you don't know anything about elementary statistics and
probability, why should anyone listen to what you have to say about
quantum mechanics?

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:40:10 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Dale Kelly
<dale.kelly@comcast.net>:

Individual events, such as the roll of dice, are random.
Only the outcome over many similar events is predictable.

Perhaps you need to study a bit of statistics?

Lets look at a finite (reduced) distribution of certain variables,
using a typical casino game, the roulette wheel. Remove all of the
numbers leaving just Red or Black wells, and a single Green well
(zero).

Now place 36, 18 Red+Black balls into the wheel and spin, can you pick
which well will NOT have a ball? They measure of Quantum "particle"
location has two parimiters, where it's momentum is, and where it's
position is.

Back to the roulette wheel, just have Two large wells, one say black,
and the other red, now toss in ONE ball, will it land in the two
wells , at the same moment? It may bounce back and forth in either
wells, as the wheel is spinning (randomly), the moment the wheel stops
it is in, either Red well or Black well.

A measure of where the ball is during the spinning, does not equal the
measure of the ball at rest?..there are more parimiters during spin,
but there is only one at rest.

The outcome is defined by the setup in which you choose to take
measured data.

It's predictable that you're wrong?

Well, yeah. You seem to be the last person discovering this glaringly
obvious fact. Why is that? Just stubborn?

Random means predictable in the long run. Given enough events, and a
completely random input gives a highly predictable outcome.

Incidentally, the outcome of non-random models such as that of gravity
are *unpredictable* in a system involving more than a very few
variables. For example, the position of planets in orbit around the
sun is unpredictable in the long term.

Science and mathematics are very interesting if you educate yourself
in the subjects. Many of the results are counterintuitive.

RF

On Mar 22, 11:59 am, Timberwoof
<timberwoof.s...@inferNOnoSPAMsoft.com> wrote:

It would be helpful if everyone stopped using 'it' as in "it is
random" and would be more specific as in "the time of decay of a
particular particle".

Here's a question:

You have a single particle of a known half-life, say 1s. What is the
probability that, if you look for it in 1e6 seconds, it will still be
there?

-tg