Wednesday, August 03, 2011

If ... and ... and ...

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


That's what you call a mighty big IF!

And, yes, it's really, really much bigger than that, but there aren't enough letters in the alphabet for all those conditions. On the flip side, the chance of being wrong is really, really small (cf. infinitesmal).


EDIT: Yes, only half the table is there.
The final column uses u as if it were v, which is missing.
My odds of being right just went up to 99.2%!
So this comic falls into the 0.8.


7 comments:

One Brow said...

I liked your diagram, but I think it is missing a column. It needed to be twice as long!

2^7 = 128.

(x, why?) said...

No, it was that long (longer, even) and I needed to shorten it quite a bit!

But, yes, you are correct.

Mistakes get made when something that sounds like a quick joke turns out to be quite more involved than you intended for it to be.

If the table were any bigger then the print would be invisible.

(x, why?) said...

Actually, that isn't true either. I had the "F" for T T T T T F, instead of T T T T T T F.

sigh

One Brow said...

If it makes you feel better, I don't think I've ever posted an entry without a bad phrase or an incomprehensible sentnece. YOu ate least putout funny, error-free comics on a regular basis.

(x, why?) said...

Thank you, I appreciate it.
On the other hand, I've been accused of deliberately making mistakes from time to time just to see if anyone will comment because there aren't a lot of comments otherwise.

DBDoane said...

You set it up right. v (you are a man) is True if p, q, r, s, t, and u are all true. Conditional probability with six binary conditions = 2^6 = 64. Where you lost me is, there's only one alternative where a person can be a man (all 6 conditions are met).

(x, why?) said...

A person can be a man despite all that other stuff. The only problem is if you are all that stuff and NOT a man, in which case, Dad's a liar.

Or, at the very least, he's wrong.

Like the comic is, but I'm not doubling the size of the comic just to fix it. I'd sooner just drop or combine conditions.

If someone writes me and says, "Mr. Burke, we'd like to make a motivational poster out of this and pay you lots of money, but we need you to fix it first!" then I'll fix it.

(Keeping in mind that that's still a true statement even if I decide to fix it without being paid.)