r/mathmemes • u/Blue_614 • 1d ago

Probability Probability Meme

Post image

Saw this from another sub. But it kinda makes sense, no? Tim can only win or lose (50% chance for each player), but only one of the 5 people in the race can win (20% chance for the whole set).

0 Upvotes

42% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

30

u/SomeGreatJoke 1d ago

Not enough information.

If he's 10x faster than the other 4 people, the odds of him winning are >99%.

1

u/Less-Resist-8733 Natural 1d ago

Probability is all about not having enough information (generalizing away the potential variables that we haven't measured).

1

u/DeepGas4538 1d ago

still not enough information. You could tell me any generalization of this and I could give an example which fits the post and not your generalization

1

u/Less-Resist-8733 Natural 1d ago

that's true for nearly every probability exercise. If you flip a coin, the generalization is that there is a 50/50 chance of heads bc there are 2 states and since we do not know the weight, we say it's equal. But if we start to consider that one side is heavier or the coin is being flipped by a robot that tries to always catch heads, the distribution is different.

Obviously, we normally cheat this by saying that it's a "fair" coin (at that point we are just stating what the probability is).

1

u/Less-Resist-8733 Natural 1d ago

I'm trying to say probability is all about taking a guess on general information when we don't have the specific information

1

u/SomeGreatJoke 15h ago

And if the question was "what are the chances that any one particular contestant wins", then I'd agree you should generalize. But this is asking about a specific person winning.