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[Ebenezer Kohlz (Banned)]

Hey Actuarial Students - A lesson on the fair

Originally Posted by Prakash V. Naor

Man, I just went on a rant in the Finance section. And it's too bad that I put it in the Finance section, because nobody ever goes there. But it's something that you actuarial students need to know.

You see, I've never seen a generation that was so obsessed with this idea that everything has to be "fair". Where did you kids get that idea anyway? You spend all day cyberfarting around on the internet, then you study a few hours, and come exam time you get laid to waste by the exam. So these exams aren't fair. If you can't pass, it must not be fair.

OK. Let me tell you little squirrels something. I'm not even gonna charge you for this sage advice. My diminutive friends, the fair is something that comes once a year, in October. It's at a nice little place called the fairgrounds, where you walk around chomping on those big ole' turkey legs, with the grease dripping down your T-shirt, then you rinse that sucker down with a few funnell cakes and a large diet coke. Then you go to the Midway and hand a few bucks to the carney's and ride some rides. And you try to throw some of those rings around the pop bottles and win a teddy bear for that cute little momma that you're dating. And after that's over, you go to the Industrial Arts barn and gawk at the cajones on the states biggest heffer. That, my friends, is the fair.

Y'all missed the frickin' fair. Now get over it!

Go get ya an actuarial book and pass the exams. And quit yer griping.

Where'd you buy the book that said everything had to be a fair?

Life ain't fair.

Regards,

Prakash V. Naor

Tri-beta-ism

Originally Posted by Prakash V. Naor

Help! I'm taking a graduate course in topology and geometry, and the book keeps referring to a "tri-beta-ism" without defining it. From what I can gather, this involves two triangles that are positioned at a certain angle relative to each other. There is a connection to rings via the symmetry groups.

Does anybody know the mathematical definition of a tri-beta-ism?

Thanks!

Prak

[Kohl]

This isn't the first Video Pancake thread but I think this is where he hit his roll. Now these quotes have fancy links so just click the arrow if you want to see the thread.

Originally Posted by Video Pancake

Hey you guys, the wife just left for the Silver Doller so come on over. Some of the boys from the Nip 'n Sip are on there way and man theyve got some theyve been icing down all day. Any you guys hadnt left yet I'll tell you what we need some jerky and pork rinds. My boy likes the barbycue kind. I got him set up to make some blender drinks and hes good at it so man any you classy guys we got you covered to. And man you guys old Jake Sitherly from down at the slaughterhouse said his sister is free tonight in case we want a stripper. I told him it depends on when the boy finally goes asleep. But man my wife wont be back before the sun comes up and later than that if she gets thrown in the can like last time. And Lloyd Cooley said his old man found this car out in his field, so we draged it over here and after we get good and drunk were going to beat on it with a sledge hammer. And my boy got his canon fixed back up so man we can really blow some stuff up. Man last time we took down that pine tree down at the church. Man the preacher was mad at me about that. It wasnt my fault though cause I told the preacher it might take down the tree before he lit that fuse. So hey you guys, if you guys want to get real drunk tonight just come on over to the Pancake homestead. Hey man, somebodey make sure you bring some eggo waffles and 7 up for the boys breakfast.

[Alto Reed on a Tenor Sax]

Originally Posted by renaissoxx

1/3 You choose goat 1
1/3 You choose goat 2
1/3 You choose car

Monty chooses goat 1

The top one is now eliminated, and you are left with 1/3 goat 2, 1/3 car, which means 1/2 chance each given you didnt choose goat 1.
Didn't I already say that? If your going to bring that up again attack my counter argument.

That problem with that explanation is the same as the problem with the original. It just also happens to contain a straw man version of the argument against their result.

When you choose 1 out of 100 doors, you probably chose a goat. But when he reveals all the doors he shows you didn't choose any of the other 98 goats, see the above response. The illusion is that your choosing a door changes the probability that the car is behind it from when after all but 2 doors are eliminated and there would be a 50/50 chance.

If humans had some god like connection to the correct answer all the time, then perhaps your statement might have more meaning to me. But is it not the case that the only knowledge a human is capable of having is the abscence of information counter to what you believe? And if that is the case, is it not true that you must FACE any information that might be counter to what you believe rather than being in denial of it, attempting to squelch it, etc? Although people often assume someone who disagrees with them is wrong for some reason, how can you know you are not thinking of a straw man argument of what they are saying? You cannot until they admit otherwise. Something which insulting them makes it harder for them to do. Many people disagree on many things and think everyone who disagrees with them are stupid and these disagreements cause many problems. This type of behavior is at the root of that problem. Not "everyone being stupid" which of course cannot be true if everyone with different belief about ethics etc claims it about everyone who disagrees with him.

Yes they increase. You knew monty would show you a goat, but you didn't know which goat. Before Monty opens his door, you know your door can contain Goat 1, Goat 2, or the car. After you know your door can contain only Goat 2 or the car. Goat 2 and the car both had an equal chance to be at your door at the beginning, so did Goat 1 (which you now know isn't)

I can just as easily ask how your choosing a door changes the probability that the car is not behind it from a situation where you come on the scene after a goat has been revealed. You didn't actually do anything or gain any different information from this situation? Try directly dealing with what I am saying like I try dealing with what you are saying. That way even if I ultimately turn out to be wrong, a better explanation of the problem has been created.

Loved every second.

[Joe Blow]

Originally Posted by Tidbit

Urrgh. He is beginning to make too big of a negative impression on my day. At the end of what seemed to be a pleasant lunch, this coworker said “I don’t usually pay for company or ambiance.” And so he refused to chip in for my birthday lunch, which my friends simply ignore and covered the difference. To make matters worse, he seemed to be in a bad mood as I repurchased my chestnut Marc Jacobs bag. My friend needed to stop at the ATM and he said “We really need to get back to work.” Huh? First off, that is just rude on any day, but I also simply don’t understand why he felt so compelled to return when it is expected that birthday lunches take longer and that is the perfect excuse to get out of the office for a longer period of time. I realize he is just in a snit and I will leave him alone for the rest of the day. I can overlook this behavior in the office but he can forget about ever going to lunch with us again.

I've tagged six delicious Tidbit threads for your pleasure.

[4sigma]

Can't believe this one wasn't in here yet: Emphasis added.

Originally Posted by Needle Sharing

Okay, this is going to be the last time I check in on this thread before Monday, because there's a lot of negativity in here right now and it's not putting me in the frame of mind I need to be in to be ready for this thing. I did want to address just one point, though.

You're exhibiting a really defeatist attitude here. Words like "don't" and "unlikely" are so limiting. I hope you're not like this in all aspects of your life.

Maybe you'll have a little more confidence in me if I let you in on a bit of my strategy. I was thinking about how me and the other guy match up. I said before that I have a bit of a weight advantage, but it's not by much. We're both pretty skinny, both unathletic because I'm an actuary and he's got some kind of computer programmer job, and neither of us have any fighting skills to speak of, I don't think. So from an athletic standpoint, it's pretty much a push.

So I was thinking, where do I have an advantage over this guy? What weaknesses of his can I exploit? And then it hit me - being successful at fighting involves more than just the physical aspect. There's a mental side to it as well. That can be my advantage right there. That's what I have to press.

In order to prepare myself mentally, I decided to stick with what I knew, so I figured I'd come at this just like an SOA exam. That's one of the most mentally stressful things you can prepare for as far as I know, and he's never been through anything like that. And yes, that means I took all the helpful fighting tips I received in this thread (from where I summarized them back in post #66) and put them on flashcards so I can memorize them. I figure it can't hurt.

So as far as what you're talking about, the joint lock, of course you're right, I don't know how to correctly apply one. But you have to bring it back to the exams again. Sometimes there'll be a question on there where you just don't know the answer. Do you start thinking "I don't know the answer," or "It's unlikely that I'll be getting any marks here"? No, you just write down the most reasonable thing you can think of and hope that it's worth something. [/b]That's what I have to do here - just grab a joint and hope for the best. I mean, that "seriously eff up his wrist or elbow" thing you mentioned there, that doesn't sound too bad, to be honest with you. That'd be like getting partial credit for a joint lock, I think.[/b]

Okay, I think that's all I've got for now. Wish me luck, everyone!

3 days later.

Originally Posted by Needle Sharing

Alright.

This was Saturday night, like I said. One guy volunteered his backyard for the location, so we were doing this on a lawn, no asphalt. After everything we went through in this thread, the rules didn't change much from what was in my original post - all that no biting, no eye-gouging, etc. stuff from my initial post stayed the same, and we decided it'd end when one person gives up or when people step in and break it up.

That day, I had butterflies starting from about 5 in the afternoon, and that feeling just kept getting more intense hour by hour, to the point where my hands were pretty much shaking by the time I arrived at the guy's place.

Of course we couldn't start before everyone got there, so there was like an hour and a half where we just sat around waiting for everyone to show up. If you want to know what kind of "audience" we had, it was 12 people (plus the two of us who were actually fighting), all of them guys, and I've known all of them for a while, except for one who was a friend of a friend. That whole waiting thing was awkward, to say the least. Lots of tension. Boxers get separate dressing rooms, we should have had something similar here. I didn't see the other guy's hands shaking or anything but he must have been feeling something along the same lines as me. He kept saying "Can we do this now?"

When we finally headed out to the backyard, I got the biggest adrenaline rush I've ever had since, well, since my last fight, whenever in middle school that was. It felt great.

Okay, so, the fight was on. There was something someone had sent to me about getting into a fighting stance, something about right foot pointing southeast and a bunch of other stuff. (See, I memorize all this stuff, and then I pretty much forget it two days later. Exactly the same as SOA exams. ) So I put my hands up near my head like I was supposed to and took that stance. I'd practiced it beforehand, but hadn't done it in front of a mirror or anything, so I guess I looked kind of wooden because he started laughing at me almost right away. There was some laughter from the peanut gallery too. It almost looked like he was thinking of striking some kind of ridiculous pose to make fun of me, but you could tell he still wanted to be ready in case I rushed him or something. So the people laughing brought me out of the stance, and I dropped my hands away from my head a little.

We started to move, circling around each other a little. I was thinking of going for that "cut kick" someone here was talking about, the one where you hit a nerve and it paralyzes his leg or whatever. So I made the first move, going towards him, trying to take a swipe at his leg with my foot. He jumped back, out of my reach, and said something like "What the hell? You don't kick in a fight!" More laughter from my friends.

Okay, now, this is the part where it's going to be a little tough to explain what I was thinking. I know this doesn't make complete sense but this is the general sentiment that was running through my head at the time: People here were saying that we would be wrestling on the ground within 15 seconds, if not sooner. Well, technically, at that point, we'd been "fighting" for over 15 seconds (or if it hadn't been 15, it certainly seemed like it) and we weren't anywhere near wrestling. So I was kind of thinking "things are deviating from the way they're supposed to go, this is a bad thing". Just a general feeling of malaise. And I thought "I have to take him down now and get to the wrestling part".

So I approach him, looking to kind of grab his legs and fall forward on top of him. I guess I kind of had my chin down like I was supposed to, and my hands were up, but not exactly up near my head like they should have been, maybe more just up around my chest. So I'm going in, kind of focusing on his legs rather than his upper body, when his legs start moving in a way I wasn't expecting. So now I have to back off that idea, because the way his legs were moving, I wasn't going to be able to take him down that way. And I raise my head up to see what he's doing. So at this point, I'm just standing there, with my hands up a little but nowhere near my head, and I'm pretty much wide open. And I know, when I analyze it after the fact like this, I can see I was doing all kinds of things wrong, but at that point I was just reacting to what was going on.

The reason his legs were moving in that unexpected way was because he was turning around. He turns all the way around and hits me with a forearm/elbow right in the mouth. So that connected, and it put me on my back. I mean, I was okay, really (not that it didn't hurt, it did), but it kind of hit me right when I was putting my head up, so it knocked me down.

From my back, then, I roll onto my side, facing away from him, and I'm just about to get up when I realize there's something in my mouth. I have a false tooth, and when he hit me, he knocked it out. So I stop for a second to spit it into my hand, and I do that, but as far as he can see I'm just lying there, so he runs up and kicks me really hard in the back (yeah, right after he said people don't kick in a fight! See, this is the kind of person he is). That gets me up in a hurry, right back to my feet. I've got the false tooth in my hand, and it's got these metal pieces attached to its sides (because those pieces were cemented to the two teeth on either side of it), so what I was going to do was take a swipe at him with that and hopefully cut him open, but before I could get to him about three or four of the guys ran in to break it up. I guess they started moving to end it when I was on the ground and he kicked me.

Afterwards I was thinking one of my real teeth got loosened too, but it feels okay now, I think. Either way, I gotta hit the dentist either tonight or tomorrow night to get them to take care of the false tooth, so maybe they can check on the adjoining teeth at the same time.

So anyway, in the end, I'd have to say it was a draw, unfortunately. No clear winner, but we both finished on our feet. If they would've let things go on just a little longer I would have had him bleeding, though.

Did it settle anything? I think so. I think he knows I'm not the kind of person he wants to mess with. I took his best shot and got right back up from it. The days of him running his mouth when I'm around are over IMO.