January 12, 2019 Saturday
Bedtime Story
To Think Bayesian Think of Monty Hall
To think Bayesian always think of Monty
Hall Problem and you will get the idea of why you need to switch your choice
(and your beliefs and world view) given new evidence.
As the Monty Hall Problem shows that to not
have Bayesian mindset (most of us do not have it inherently but we all have a
choice to acquire it during our life time) is to lose out monetarily and materialistically
besides having a distorted image of the reality.
The odd thing about the Monty Hall Problem
(rather than the problem being odd it is our evolved tangled mesh of neurons
that has odd interpretations or simulations of reaility) is that even after
offering the subjects or the readers the solution to the problem most still
decline to accept the answer.
When the American magazine columnist
Marilyn vos Savant posed this problem to her readers in the 1990 issue of the
Parade magazine and offered her explanation almost 10,000 readers of whom about
a thousand held doctorate degrees wrote back to the columnist saying her
explanation was wrong.
Forget about average ape, even mathematician
of the caliber of Paul Erdös was not convinced of the solution until much
later.
So it is very much understandable if you do
not wish to change to Bayesian way of thinking because you are among the
majority as we all consider ourselves right and supreme.
That is the way we have been programmed.
But Bohr and Einstein were not like the
rest of us apes; in spite of their gut feelings and dislike for what quantum
nature of the world was throwing at them they had to change their theories that
would align them with the experimental evidence.
Carl Sagan in his book ‘The Demon-Haunted
World: Science as a Candle in the Dark’ wrote:
“But I try not to think with my gut.
If I’m serious about understanding the
world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be,
is likely to get me into trouble.”
It was same with Einstein and Bohr; even
though a lot of experimental data were not their liking and feelings they both
knew that sooner or later facts and truth will prevail and not their gut feelings.
Eventually where they differed most on the
subject was one very specific subcomponent of quantum mechanics that is
fundamental to our understanding of the real physical world: quantum
nonlocality.
It was not just the fact of this one
subtopic where they disagreed but the interpretation that Bohr proposed for it
and its implication to the physical world.
I am no expert on this subject and Mon Ami
is much well read on this but all I need to tell you is that quantum
nonlocality is one of those topics that eventually leads to foundational
discussions on quantum mechanics.
One of the foundational subjects of
discussion on quantum mechanics is how to reconcile the mathematical structure
of the quantum mechanics with our day to day physical reality.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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