Probability (1 Viewer)

[hscishard]

What's the probability of me picking the value 0 out of all possible values that exist?

 

[deterministic]

You mean choosing 0 out of all possible real numbers? Then see this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution#Continuous_probability_distribution

 

[hscishard]

Exactly what I wanted, though a few parts I don't get but it doesn't matter

I was about to use numbers, but chose value because the probability is 0, as nothing is valueless

Oh crap, I said "the value 0"

 

[powlmao]

What's the probability of me picking the value 0 out of all possible values that exist?

Wouldn't it be





??

 

[JennaJameson]

Wouldn't it be



??

lol u can't divide by infinity

 

[powlmao]

lol u can't divide by infinity

Argh *Face Palm*

Nice Avatar lol

 

[hscishard]

There are an infinite amount of possibilities, yes. Hence 1/infinity. Using limits, this is zero. However, there is a chance of selecting that number. Hence paradox

 

[largarithmic]

It's not a paradox, it's probability zero. The problem is that "probability zero" and "never occurs" are not always equivalent statements when dealing with infinite sets. Similarly "probability 1" actually means "almost always occurs" rather than "always occurs", see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely.

It all has to do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_choice. If you don't accept the Axiom of Choice (and some mathematicians don't), then, well, you're not allowed to pick a number about of infinitely many numbers. It's a process that you just can't do.

 

[hscishard]

Interesting...

For axiom of choice, tl;dr