Skip to main content

QI just doesn't get probability

I'm a great fan of QI, but there are some subjects their question writers (and Stephen Fry) just don't get - one of which is probability.

I was watching an old edition on Dave last night (as you do when there's nothing else on) and this question came up (approximately: I'm relating it from memory):


If you toss a coin what is the chance of getting heads?

Someone answered 50:50 and off went that irritating klaxon. No, said Stephen Fry. When a human being tosses a coin, the face that is up when you toss it has a slightly better chance of winning. If the head's up, it's 51:49.

Yes, but it their aim to be clever, they have totally missed the point. They didn't ask If you toss a coin in the heads up position what is the chance of getting heads? Because of the way they asked the question there's a 50% chance you started heads up and a 50% chance you started tails up. So there's a 50% chance of it being 51:49 and a 50% chance of it being 49:51. End result? 50:50, just like the penalized person said.*

I know this sounds petty, but the whole game relies on the petty application of frequently misunderstood knowledge, which means they really ought to do better on such a basic point.

* Technically it's not quite 50:50 because of the different aerodynamic properties of the two faces, but it's close enough for these purposes.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...