Original thought
How many famous people can you think of? It’s probably somewhere in the region of a million, and I’ll tell you how I know. Consider the game Twenty Questions. One player thinks of a famous person, the other works out who it is by asking a series of yes/no questions. Up to twenty, in fact - it’s well named, y’see. Assuming you ask sensible questions like ‘Is it a man’, rather than ‘Have they ever been attacked by an otter named Spike’ or ‘Is it their hobby to make viking helmets for their toes’, each question divides the possibilities approximately in two. Twenty questions is generally about the right number to whittle it down to one, which means we must start with about two to the twenty possibilities, or 1,048,576. That’s a whole lot of famous people.
I mention this observation - for which I can’t take the credit, but I can’t remember where I read it so I can’t attribute the credit to anyone else either - because it occurs to me that a similar (albeit cruder) rule can be applied to my blog. Prior to this one, there were 469 entries. A few of those were by guest bloggers - let’s call it about 460 by me. Yesterday, for the first time - at least to my knowledge - I inadvertantly repeated an idea I’d used previously.
You know that puzzle about someone taking socks out of a drawer in the dark, and wanting to know how many socks they need to take out before they’re likely to have a pair? Using similar logic, one could calculate, given that I first repeated myself after 460 posts, how many original ideas there are floating around in my head. When I say ‘one could calculate’, what I mean, of course, is that ’someone much better at maths than me could calculate’, with the ill-concealed hope that they will do so in the comments. I have a feeling that the answer will be depressingly small.
Elsewhere in the news, my lovely mum - terrified by tales of ebay scammers - offered to buy me a brand new laptop as an early Christmas present. So today I had a look at a few online, and accidentally bought one. I’m glad she’s footing the bill or I’d be skint now. Ta mum!
And finally, some time during the next day or so this site will be moving to a new host. For you non-technermological people, this means: ‘things might go weird for a bit’. Just hold tight and everything will work out fine. Probably.
Comments
| I’m not sure I agree with your ‘divide in two’ assertion. For example, I may ask “Is it a man?” to which you reply “Yes". I now ask “Does he have a beard?". This does not bisect the group who would fall into the “no” category in the previous question. Unless, of course, you live in a world where half the women have beards. I’ve never been to Hainault, so I can’t comment on that matter. Comment by Stu — June 15, 2004 at 12:17 AM |
| i disagree with stu and i also say |
| Totally unrelated to anything, except I’ve seen simon refer to http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - if you are in a Euro 2004 mood (and even if you aren’t), have a look at http://www.footballbadgers.com - they’re ba-ack :) AARRGGHH!!!! Comment by Brad — June 15, 2004 at 1:34 AM |
| Ah a pigeonhole principle example. You have 459 original blog ideas in your head. Comment by el10t — June 15, 2004 at 6:57 AM |
| Is that a link el10t? (it doesn’t work if so) Comment by MarcB — June 15, 2004 at 7:07 AM |
| How bizarre. It was a link but it seems it’s been stripped out, thought the formatting of it to make it look like a link remains. It was http://www2.edc.org/makingmath/mathtools/pigeonhole/pigeonhole.asp Comment by el10t — June 15, 2004 at 7:21 AM |
| ‘Accidentally’ buying laptops? How does that w**k then? Comment by JG — June 15, 2004 at 8:31 AM |
| How will we notice it go weird? Or will it be weirder than usual? Comment by ned — June 15, 2004 at 8:36 AM |
| This needs bayes’ theorem, which gives you the probability of a thing given one thing given the probability of the other thing not given anything and the probability of the other thing given the first thing. Or something. Comment by sweavo — June 15, 2004 at 10:11 AM |
| … and is doubly annoying because I had a mediocre book entitled “why buses come in threes” which I left in merikaland on account of being Waaay over my baggage allowance, which I believe also answered this question. Comment by sweavo — June 15, 2004 at 10:13 AM |
| Ok here’s a start. Say you know n subjects and you made p posts. If you make two posts, the chance of you repeating yourself is 1/n. So the chances of NOT repeating yourself is (n-1)/n. If you make another post, then the chances of not repeating yourself are (n-2)/n * (n-1)/n, or (n-2)(n-1)/(n squared). Simply continue this for 460 terms. This gives the probabilty of repeating yourself given 460 posts and knowing n subject. Then apply bayes’ theorem. Maybe. Comment by sweavo — June 15, 2004 at 10:37 AM |
| This sounds like the kind of thing Milk Monster’s Dad is talented at Comment by mort’s mom — June 15, 2004 at 11:42 AM |
| I’ve already solved it though (up there). I’m making the assumption that Simon attempts to avoid repeating himself on a subject matter (which is where Sweavo’s random subject matter approach falls down). On day 460 he has run out of new subjects and therefore has to repeat a previous one. So he only knows 459 subjects. Comment by el10t — June 15, 2004 at 12:47 PM |
| According to my brother, links don’t work in MT comments any more. I’d assumed it was just the new version, but maybe not… Comment by Miss Sixty — June 15, 2004 at 1:08 PM |
| My head hurts… Comment by Jenny — June 15, 2004 at 1:14 PM |
| I think el10t’s half right - I try to avoid repeating myself, but the longer ago I wrote about something the first time, the less likely I am to remember having done so. Y’all need to work that into your equations. Comment by SimonG — June 15, 2004 at 1:38 PM |
| Just one cotton-picking minute… you didn’t just say “Y’all” did you? Comment by Stu — June 15, 2004 at 5:06 PM |
| If Simon only knows 459 posts, surely the next 459 will be repeats if he has started repeating already? So this blog entry must have been posted before, although I doubt it would be possible to find it by date reference: Simons brain is *surely* too jumbled up to make things that simple for us. :) And no, I’m not going to read back through all Simons posts just to obtain evidence of more repeats. Although I may just re-visit the 2nd of August 2003, cos that was fun. :D Comment by Omally — June 15, 2004 at 5:10 PM |
| Ah.. but the very fact he had a repeat gave him at least one more topic to blog about. So the other repeats start tomorrow. Comment by Stu — June 15, 2004 at 6:37 PM |
| I think I may be a bad influence here … did I just see SimonG write “Y’all"? I think maybe my southernness is rubbing off on y’all. :) Blimey. :) Comment by ScottJ — June 15, 2004 at 7:47 PM |
| You can pack that in for a start, Scotty! Rubbing off indeed. It’s not as if any of us regularly say “Y’all” or “Yo” or “Dude", y’know. Or is that Californian? ;) Comment by Omally — June 15, 2004 at 8:28 PM |
| You forgot ‘Crumbs!’, Scott ;) The next stage is “Cor blimey, Mary Poppins” then everyone laughs and throws things at you. Comment by JG — June 15, 2004 at 9:03 PM |