The joke is really on the people who live in that country and are trusting there navy to defend them.
]]>Hi Ubergeek;
The problem now becomes that the admiral and the subordinate believe you can a add the probabilities up. It's simple to prove that this is nonsense 4 * 1/3 = 4/3 so 4 missiles gives you a probability of 4/3 of destroying the target? Probablities can not exceed 1 and 4/3 is bigger than 1.
In actuality, firing 3 missiles only gives you a probability of 1-(2/3)^3 ≈ .7037 or about a 70% chance that you have destroyed the target. Their analysis is foolish because no amount of missiles can guarantee that the target is destroyed.
Lol, that's true. I got so caugh up in the decimal thing I didn't realized the joke was on the probability. Thanks for clarifying bobbym.
]]>The problem now becomes that the admiral and the subordinate believe you can a add the probabilities up. It's simple to prove that this is nonsense 4 * 1/3 = 4/3 so 4 missiles gives you a probability of 4/3 of destroying the target? Probablities can not exceed 1 and 4/3 is bigger than 1.
In actuality, firing 3 missiles only gives you a probability of 1-(2/3)^3 ≈ .7037 or about a 70% chance that you have destroyed the target. Their analysis is foolish because no amount of missiles can guarantee that the target is destroyed.
]]>Hi;I think the math instructor is trying to say that the subordinate thinks .3333333333 = 1/3 when .3333333333... = 1/3
I think it may be so. Either way, isn't the difference way to little to take another missile to destroy the target? I mean, you don't have to pulverize it all, the difference of 0.9999999999 to 1 can't mean anything relevant.
]]>Definitely, his mistake is that he truncated 1/3 to a terminating decimal. Instead of punching in 1/3 in his calc (many scientific calcs when adding 1/3, 3 times will get 1 as the answer) he punched in .3333333333
I think the math instructor is trying to say that the subordinate thinks .3333333333 = 1/3 when .3333333333... = 1/3
]]>Since these are terminating decimals he is right about .3333333333+.3333333333+.3333333333=.9999999999 < 1
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