this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
1262 points (98.8% liked)

Science Memes

11426 readers
2285 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ValiantDust@feddit.org 102 points 3 weeks ago (25 children)

Having two possible outcomes does not mean it's a 50:50 chance.

"So if I aim the arrow at the 1cm square from 100m away and shoot, I either hit it or I don't. So basically I have a 50% chance of hitting it."

[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (7 children)

Very weird fun fact about arrows/darts and statistics, theres 0% chance of hitting an exact bullseye. You can hit it its possible to throw a perfect bullseye. It just has a probability of zero when mathematically analyzed due to being an infinitesimally small point. Sound like I'm making shit up? Here's the sauce

How can an outcome both be entirely possible and have 0% probability?

Q.E.D

[–] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 30 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Key word here is "infinitesimally." Of course if you're calculating the odds of hitting something infinitesimally small you're going to get 0. That's just the nature of infinities. It is impossible to hit an infinitesimally small point, but that's not what a human considers to be a "perfect bullseye." There's no paradox here.

[–] aim_at_me@lemmy.nz 2 points 2 weeks ago

Oh. That's what they mean. That's dumb lol.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (22 replies)