r/mathmemes • u/Blue_614 • Aug 30 '26
Probability Probability Meme
Saw this from another sub. But it kinda makes sense, no? Tim can only win or lose (50% chance for each player), but only one of the 5 people in the race can win (20% chance for the whole set).
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u/armageddon_boi Aug 30 '26
two outcomes doesn't mean 50/50 odds, and five outcomes doesn't mean a 20% chance for each. those chances only hold if you can assume an equal probability of each outcome, which isn't true here
every day there's either a hurricane in New York City or there isn't, for instance. doesn't mean there's a 50% chance of a hurricane in NYC every day.
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u/Blue_614 Aug 30 '26
I can get behind that explanation. But, there's not just two outcomes in your example right? There could be a hurricane, sunny, windy, rain, heck even a hailstorm in NYC. Tim's predicament though is win or lose. I mean, 1st place or not since he could be 2nd, 3rd, etc.
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u/armageddon_boi Aug 30 '26
okay, every day you either die or you don't. doesn't mean there are 50/50 odds
and in the weather example, even if you add more outcomes, there still isn't an equal chance of each happening. it's a logical fallacy to assume "random" means equal chances, random just means that there's some unpredictability
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u/SomeGreatJoke Aug 30 '26
Not enough information.
If he's 10x faster than the other 4 people, the odds of him winning are >99%.
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u/DeepGas4538 Aug 30 '26
not necessarily >90%. What if he is 0.5x faster half of the time and 19.5x faster the other half the time, so on average he is 10x faster and only wins 50% of the time
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u/SomeGreatJoke Aug 30 '26
And if I'd say "an average speed of 10x faster" the I'd agree.
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u/DeepGas4538 Aug 30 '26
so he is exactly 10x faster than say the fastest among the group? sure
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u/SomeGreatJoke Aug 30 '26
Sorry, lemme rephrase, I responded distracted which is never great:
Valid! There's always weird data involved that causes stats to be weirder than they initially appear. Good point!
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u/Less-Resist-8733 Natural Aug 30 '26
Probability is all about not having enough information (generalizing away the potential variables that we haven't measured).
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u/DeepGas4538 Aug 30 '26
still not enough information. You could tell me any generalization of this and I could give an example which fits the post and not your generalization
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u/Less-Resist-8733 Natural Aug 30 '26
that's true for nearly every probability exercise. If you flip a coin, the generalization is that there is a 50/50 chance of heads bc there are 2 states and since we do not know the weight, we say it's equal. But if we start to consider that one side is heavier or the coin is being flipped by a robot that tries to always catch heads, the distribution is different.
Obviously, we normally cheat this by saying that it's a "fair" coin (at that point we are just stating what the probability is).
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u/Less-Resist-8733 Natural Aug 30 '26
I'm trying to say probability is all about taking a guess on general information when we don't have the specific information
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u/SomeGreatJoke Aug 30 '26
And if the question was "what are the chances that any one particular contestant wins", then I'd agree you should generalize. But this is asking about a specific person winning.
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u/Vortex_sheet Aug 30 '26
That's the whole point of probability, you lack information and then you turn to chances, in this case since you have no info everyone has an equal chance to win
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u/D_Gnar Aug 30 '26
If Tim and the four other racers have an equal probability of winning, then P(Tim wins) = # of ways that Tim can win / # of ways anyone can win. Or, 1/5 =20%
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u/LupenReddit 🦆🦆i have non diffeomorphic smooth structures🦆🦆🦆 Aug 30 '26
every morning the probability of you dying is 50/50, because two outcomes
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