BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): the sieve of chance

[Monte Davis]

Not that I remember. He isn't rigorously averse to fudging, though: we
wouldn't have the title if he weren't scumbling the parabola with rainbows
-- which are typically arcs (segments of a circle), occasionally (due to
atmospheric anomalies) distorted arcs, but never AFAIK parabolic.

On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 1:40 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Sorry for the mistype: *its will* not *it's will*
>
> Question, Monte: the bell curve can look like a parabola if you lop off
> the outliers. Is Pynchon making any metaphorical connections between normal
> distribution and the parabola anywhere?
>
> LK
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monte Davis
> Sent: May 13, 2016 1:13 PM
> To: "kelber at mindspring.com"
> Cc: Thomas Eckhardt , “pynchon-l at waste.org“
> Subject: Re: BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): the sieve of chance
>
> Very much so -- and P scatters the language of mass-production statistics
> liberally in the Byron story.
>
> On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 12:47 PM, kelber at mindspring.com <
> kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> Sort of the Byron the Bulb issue: is the long-burning bulb asserting it's
>> will, magical, technologically-tampered or just sitting comfortably at the
>> outermost extremes of the bell curve?
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> *Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID*
>>
>>
>> Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >But once it *has* settled...
>> That's the crux, and a starting point for a fascinating (some other time)
>> excursus into Bayesian probability. We do much more anthropomorphizing and
>> projection than we know, and a some level we'll always feel that the
>> roulette ball has a memory and "knows" it should start evening things out
>> by settling on red. That feeling grows much faster than the unlikelihood of
>> any given run of black does -- which is why more players flocked to make
>> ever larger bets on red, and overall the casino did very well that night.
>>
>> > It would have been the same probability even if the ball at that point
>> had settled on black for a few million times in a row, no?
>>
>> Yes -- aside from the likelihood that you would long since have concluded
>> the wheel must be rigged :-)
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>
>>>  Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> P. 56:
>>>>
>>>> “But squares that have already* had* several hits, I mean—”
>>>>
>>>> “I’m sorry. That’s the Monte Carlo Fallacy..."
>>>>
>>>
>>> I look at it like this: It is highly unlikely that the roulette ball
>>> settles on black for 26 times in a row. But once it *has* settled on black
>>> for 26 times in a row, the probability for it to do so again with the next
>>> spin of the wheel is the same as before (48.6 per cent, that is).
>>>
>>> At least that's how I explain it to the kids...
>>>
>>> Where the bettors went wrong was that 26 spins of a roulette wheel
>>>> simply isn't that large a number.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hmmm. It would have been the same probability even if the ball at that
>>> point had settled on black for a few million times in a row, no?
>>>
>>
>>
>
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