Probably lost

I am trying to teach myself a little more about probability. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because during my last trip to Vegas, my only trip to Vegas, I got hosed by ProblyNotU, the norse god of gambling who obviously hates me. Maybe it's because i was bored and figured this book might be interesting. Most likely it's probably because it is something I feel like I should understand, but don't really.

Anyway, I bought this book as part of my birthday present to myself (is that lame? not buying yourself a birthday present, but making part of it a book on probability?). After a bit of history of probability, they get to a point where they are talking about standard distribution, which makes sense since it is the standard after all, and they mentioned something about the standard deviation. If you had asked me to define the standard deviation before I was reading this, I would have said the smaller the standard deviation, the tighter the values around the mean. One standard deviation from the mean is approximately 32% (I think) of the values, so approx. 64% of the area under the standard bell curve is within 1 std dev of the mean.

However, and this is one of those interesting facts that really makes math interesting and makes me believe the universe might generally be annoyed with me for some reason and be generally entirely random, but maybe at some point it will love me and become orderly. The fact is this: on a standard bell curve, one standard deviation is the inflection point of the graph, meaning the point where the graph goes from convex to concave (or vice versa, depending if you are travelling up or down the graph. I can't remember which is which).

Now that is interesting. I guess if I had really thought about it, I might have figured that out, or just tossed out a "wouldn't it be interesting if the standard dev was related to the inflection point...". In my 2nd semester calculus in college, and stop me if you've heard this one, our professor used to say things like, "This is pretty straight forward, and you would figure this out if you were left on a desert island but we don't have time for that..." then he would put up some 8 blackboard proof showing the sky is blue because the arc of the curve under the water bubble in the sky reflects in such a way or some other crazy thing I would frankly not have figured out on a desert island. I think if I was left on a desert island, I would be the greatest coconut shooting basketball player in history, but that's another post. Anyway, his name was Prof. Mattock (Maddick, Matok, something like that), and he was great. I don't know if he is still teaching, but he should be. He was probably the 2nd best teacher I had in college.

Anyway, since I'm telling stories, I'm not sure how i got out of the introduction probability course without learning this. I didn't understand the entirity of the class, so maybe the inflection point/standard dev issue was mentioned between Chebyshev and Poisson distributions, I don't know. Anyway, it was one of those classes that wasn't required for graduation, but was required for almost every single major so everyone in the college had taken it, almost all of us from the same professor. The professor was a quirky little guy who had taught the class for a million years and liked to say things like, "If anyone comes up to you on the street and offers you a poisson distribution with a standard devition of 90%, run away!" He had a million examples like this, and the only thing i remember is that Poisson may have something to do with the odds of rare things happening to you that you don't want to happen (lightning strikes, things like that). It could probably work the other way (rare things happening to you that you do want to happen, like love), but he never talked about that. Glass is half full kind of guy I suppose, I can appreciate that. I think my strongest memory of the class is I took it with a bunch of friends, including upper classmen and one friend who took it pass/fail because everyone else was taking it. He only came to about 3 classes. He was sitting behind one class me making fun of people walking in, which is generally how he passed his time. People were filing in, and one classic nerd looking guy walks in with the periodic table of elements on his T-shirt. My friend starts laughing and points at him just as the teacher walks in (what are the odds?). So the teacher walks in, the class quiets down just as my friend continues pointing blurts out quite loudly because it had been loud a moment ago, "Look at the geek!" as he just keeps laughing and pointing and it's dead silent except for him and those of us near him laughing or trying not to laugh. Good times.

Anyway, the professor was quirky but I'm not sure how i got out of that class without understanding even that basic relationship. He was a good teacher too, but I think he passed away a few years back, which is sad.

Anyway, in general, at times like this, I'm happy I appreciate math and science because there is always more for me to learn and understand, and it generally fascinates me. However, sometimes I'm not really sure how I ever graduated. Hmmph.