Wednesday 18 December 2013

               I have come up with some more infinity paradoxes, as well as an interesting video that fits in quite nicely. The video is by a group on you tube called Numberphile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDl7g_2x74Q is the link to the video. In this video he talks about four different infinity paradoxes and probably explains them better than I can on this blog.
               The paradox I'd like to share with you today is a dart board paradox, for all those dart enthusiasts out there. Imagine throwing a dart at a dart board and having a 100% guarantee that the dart is going to hit the dart board. Now think about the point of the end of the dart, and imagine a mathematical point on the dart board. What exactly is the probability that the dart is going to hit that point on the dart board?
                Turns out there isn't a sensible answer for this. If we say that there is a probability greater than one ( which seems like a reasonable deduction), we must consider that there is an infinite number of points on this dart board. All these points would also have the same probability of being hit. As there is an infinite number of point on the dart board, you would have to add up all the probabilities and come to the conclusion that there is an infinite probability of that point being hit. This is complete rubbish as you can't have a probability greater than one.
                On the other hand if we say that the chance of hitting that point is zero, we could say the same for any point on the dart board. This means that the probability of hitting any point on the dart board is zero, which again doesn't make sense because we know that there is a 100% probability of the dart hitting the board...
                  This again in another strange infinity paradox, if you're interested and not too bored by my non-nonsensical ranting then maybe you could look up these paradoxes for yourself and check them out. I think they're cool... 
               

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