When you get a downvote, ignore it. It's probably accidental or meaningless and these tend to self correct over a day.
When people downvote a bunch of your posts in a thread IGNORE THE DOWNVOTES. Vindictive downvote sprees are usually corrected over the course of the day. Mentioning the downvotes will usually prevent those corrective upvotes. Me tioning the downvotes in the unpleasant way that you do will attract downvotes.
You may wish to consider how you're presenting the information. If the first table of numbers gets downvotes posting the same table again without more information is going to get the same downvotes.
You could argue that it should not be this way, but it is.
> You could argue that it should not be this way, but it is.
Indeed it is. State facts, back up what you say with evidence, get downvoted. As certain as sunrise.
> If the first table of numbers gets downvotes posting the same table again without more information is going to get the same downvotes.
The alternative is to adopt the standards of religion instead of science. In religion, if you start losing followers, you change the mythology. In science, evidence is evidence, and how people feel about it has no standing.
> When you get a downvote, ignore it. It's probably accidental or meaningless ...
Easily proven false. My downvotes inevitably accompany anything I post that has evidence and/or links to references. If I offer an uncorroborated opinion or philosophical remark, however irrelevant or baseless, it's treated neutrally. This is how science works -- you observe things dispassionately and don't let yourself to be swayed by what people think is true.
Well, judging from your usual quality of comments (you're one of the users I remember for good contributions in science threads) I think there's an disagreement here that is not stated explicitly.
Do you disagree with any of the following statements, and if yes, where and why?
- original stopwatch solutions gives equal probability for any of the kid to get picked
- your modulo solution does not give equal probability for any of the kid to get picked
- you argue that the non-uniformness of your solution is not relevant in practice, because number of kids is likely to be an order of magnitude smaller than the readout from the stopwatch (i.e. last two digits)
> Do you disagree with any of the following statements, and if yes, where and why?
Okay. I usually expect people to locate the errors in their own thinking, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Here's one of the suggestions: "multiply the last digit by the number of children and divide by ten". Let's see how this works out:
The OP could have tested his suggestion before posting. I certainly would have.
I'm going to avoid your straw men, with this exception:
> you argue that the non-uniformness of your solution is not relevant in practice
I never said that. I said that the error could be minimized. But consider my test of the the alternative listed above. The error inherent with a relatively small number of children and a relatively large original number, say, 0 - 59, is a smaller error than the proposed alternative.
Hey, I asked you three simple questions with pretty much boolean answers, in order to try and clarify where exactly you end up disagreeing with everyone. Please be charitable.
> Here's one of the suggestions: "multiply the last digit by the number of children and divide by ten".
Hey, that one was clearly meant as a joke, and is not the suggestion I was referring to. If something is a strawman here, this is. The one I asked about is the "My parents used the last digit on a stopwatch to decide which of the kids got to pick the radio station in the car and similarly trivial decisions. (If 0-9 couldn't be divided evenly among the kids present, leftover digits would result in a re-roll.)".
Anyway, I must say I found the technique I used above quite effective at figuring out continous disagreements. You state some simple true/false statements describing your assumptions and ask the other party to agree/disagree and explain the points of disagreement. Apply recursively if needed. Kind of a discussion equivalent of git bisect ;).
When you get a downvote, ignore it. It's probably accidental or meaningless and these tend to self correct over a day.
When people downvote a bunch of your posts in a thread IGNORE THE DOWNVOTES. Vindictive downvote sprees are usually corrected over the course of the day. Mentioning the downvotes will usually prevent those corrective upvotes. Me tioning the downvotes in the unpleasant way that you do will attract downvotes.
You may wish to consider how you're presenting the information. If the first table of numbers gets downvotes posting the same table again without more information is going to get the same downvotes.
You could argue that it should not be this way, but it is.