Thread: coincidences

"Oh, well this would be one of those circumstances that people unfamiliar with the law of large numbers would call a coincidence." - Sheldon Cooper

Lol I love the Big Bang Theory XD

Originally Posted by Mario F.

But the probability of a random event does not imply causation at all.

Yes, I believe I said that there is no causation in a coincidence.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

You do realize that, despite what you say here, you move on with the rest of your post explaining coincidences in terms of probabilities.

No, I was explaning that any chance occurance is a coincidence. Unless you are claiming
that the die is loaded, isn't the occurance of two sixes in a row a coincidence?

If you are saying that we do not normally refer to such a thing as a coincidence, then
that is more about the common usage of the term, not it's definition.

If someone on TV rolled a die, and I simutaneously rolled a die, and both came up six,
would you call that a coincidence? The probability is exactly the same.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

The point is that you cannot quantify how much a of coincidence something is. Even on the simple matter of throwing dice, the number of dice thrown and how many can be thrown in a given amount of time, will alter your perception of what could be an "amazing" coincidence.

I agree with that. But that's not what you said originally:

"...If I throw a dice two times and on both it comes a six, do I consider that a coincidence; i.e. an anomalous result, given the odds?...
...Or, for argument sake let's say 4 times and 4 sixes is an impressive result we should call a coincidence..."

You appeared to questioning if an occurance should even be considered to be a coincidence
at all, based on perceived likelyhood. You also seem to be saying that as the probability gets
lower, we are more justified in believing it to be a coincidence.
But isn't it just the opposite? When the probability is very low, we believe it is not a coincidence.

I wasn't suggesting that one could quantify a "mere" coincidence or an "amazing" coincidence.
My point was that both of those are still coincidences. The perceived likelyhood only affects
how we describe a coincidence, not whether it is a coincidence or not.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

When you have no data to hold on to, this becomes even harder. And when you look at something amazingly coincidental, you may miss the fact it may be a tragic coincidence to someone else, on which case it is called a disaster, accident or bad luck. Not a coincidence, but an unfortunate turn of events. The parents of that bird will not look at the baseball ball as a coincidence, but as a tragic accident. Like the families of people involved in car accidents or plane crashes who will not think that it is a coincidence that their loved one was on that car or that plane.

Not sure how this applies. Assuming the two events are related somehow, eg, the bird and baseball
sharing a similar location at the same time, if you call it an accident, mustn't you also call it a coincidence?
If you call it an accident, you are necessarily saying there is no causation. You have all the requirements
now of a coincidence.

If you have enough doubt about lack of causation to say it's not a coincidence, then you can not call it
an accident, either.

I would agree that knowing the probability of two events occuring by chance could give us some
certain level of confidence that there was no causation. And from that we would have some certain
level of confidence that the occurance was a coincidence.

But if we know that there is no causation to a high degree of certainty by some other means, does
it matter how unlikely the occurrance of the two events really is? For example, if we know that the
dice are fair, then any occurance of the same dice value is a coincidence, whether it is 2 in a row,
or 10 in a row.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

And then there's actually the problem of causation. A coincidence may not imply a causation. But it is often seen as a design. Einstein famous quote, "A coincidence is the way for god to remain anonymous" (or something like that), is not something taken out of context of how we often tend to perceive coincidences. What's worse, sometimes what we consider to be two completely unrelated events that join in a coincidence, may in fact be hiding a connection that, if understood, could lower or even eliminate the level of the coincidence.
This lack of ability to quantify is probably what the author of the book discusses. And then there's also the problem you described that two events may not even be connected in time, or be connected solely by our own human time units.
A "Coincidence" is way to describe two or more events coming together. And yet we have no way of saying what it exactly is.

I am not about to argue with Einstein

Isn't this just modifying the definition of coincidence, though?
I can understand someone thinking that there is something more going on when a coincidence occurs,
but don't you have to stop calling it a coincidence at that point?

Maybe there is something else underlying what we call coincidence. I don't know. I would suggest
in that case, a new definition.

-

Man, probability is such a dumb part of math. Which is ironic because the classes I did my best in were the quantum mechanics ones. Well, really electricity and magnetism but for someone who hates probability as much as I do, I didn't do much worse in QM.

If y'all wanna talk probability, play Final Fantasy IV for the DS. Each final rare piece of equipment has a 1/128 chance of being dropped after a battle. 2 Onion Swords + Shields, 5 Adamant Armors, Onion Armors, Onion Helms, Onion Gloves later, I had wasted God knows how many hours. Oh, and then there were the rare summons.

It'd be easy to assume I had no life but I would farm while watching TV lol. XD

Originally Posted by rogster001

Something Ive wished id always recorded is all those times that bizzare coincidences occur - i am talking about the times you are thinking of an old say film or song, talking about it, and then a few days later it is on tv.

at the risk of attracting much ridicule..
we were all messing about using a name generator for 'bond girl' names, ie james bond - its rather amusing... and the rule is the girl has to start with the surname of her favourite actress, which will then become the first name of the bond girl name.
So this girl says i dont have a favourite actress
so we said just use your favourite female singer then instead
she decided on the singer pink - obviously thats not a surname, so we had to look up pink's real name to get her surname
and its moore
like roger moore - james bond actor.

The odds have got to be outrageous.

I agree with this strongly