A coincidence that bothers me

[Stu Pidasso]

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Yes it is completely wrong. You don't seem to grasp concepts of probability very well. When the same number comes up on a roulette wheel four times in a row, it doesn't make a designer any more likely.

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What you say about the roulette wheel is only correct if you know the wheel to be true. If the same number comes up four times in a row would you fault the pit boss for closing the table and checking the wheel for trueness?

The difference in your thinking and mine is that I am open to the ideal of a designer while you are certain one does not exist. Your closed-minded-certainty is clouding your thinking about this.

Stu

[madnak]

You're missing the point. With 10 roulette wheels spinning 24/7 2 times per minute on average you get 1.7 million spins per day. There's a 1 in 54,000 chance that any three spins will be the same as the previous spin. Therefore, 4 in a row is a routine occurence. It happens every day. The pit boss won't even notice it, much less think his wheel's broken. Of course, a wheel could be broken, but 4-in-a-row is no indication of this. A normal wheel will get 4-in-a-row frequently. It is simply not that rare or remarkable.

And it's still orders of magnitude rarer than your moon example!

[Stu Pidasso]

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The likelihood of your ratio, given your loose standards, is at least 1/50. The likelihood of the lottery example is at most 1/1,000,000. So the situations are not analogous.

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I don't think my standards are so loose. Here is how NASA describes the coincidence

"Earth is the only planet in the solar system with spectacular solar eclipses. Thanks to an apparently improbable coincidence, the Sun and the Moon are almost exactly the same size as seen from Earth. The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away" - bolded added for emphasis
Source

ZeeJustin said [ QUOTE ]
Using wikipedia numbers I get that the sun is 389.17 times as far away as the moon

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This number is useless because the distance the moon is from the sun constantly changes as the moon and the earth trace thru thier orbits. The only number that is relevant is the distance of the moon from the sun during the exact moment of a total solar eclipse.

Stu

[vhawk01]

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The likelihood of your ratio, given your loose standards, is at least 1/50. The likelihood of the lottery example is at most 1/1,000,000. So the situations are not analogous.

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I don't think my standards are so loose. Here is how NASA describes the coincidence

"Earth is the only planet in the solar system with spectacular solar eclipses. Thanks to an apparently improbable coincidence, the Sun and the Moon are almost exactly the same size as seen from Earth. The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away" - bolded added for emphasis
Source

ZeeJustin said [ QUOTE ]
Using wikipedia numbers I get that the sun is 389.17 times as far away as the moon

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This number is useless because the distance the moon is from the sun constantly changes as the moon and the earth trace thru thier orbits. The only number that is relevant is the distance of the moon from the sun during the exact moment of a total solar eclipse.

Stu

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You are missing the larger point. Neptune is not 13 times larger than Pluto. The Earth is not 7 times larger than Mercury. Jupiter is not 666 times larger than Venus. If any of these were, this thread would be about that.

[Sephus]

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This number is useless because the distance the moon is from the sun constantly changes as the moon and the earth trace thru thier orbits. The only number that is relevant is the distance of the moon from the sun during the exact moment of a total solar eclipse.

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there is no such number. there's a different one for every eclipse. probably some are above average, some under, right?

[bunny]

I dont even see what the coincidence is. My hand "exactly covers the sun" if I hold it up in front of my face. Anything, of any size (bigger than your pupil) will if it's close enough - and the moon isnt at some exact distance to make this happen - could be more, could be less, it would still cover the sun. What's the stellar coincidence? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Stu Pidasso]

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I dont even see what the coincidence is. My hand "exactly covers the sun" if I hold it up in front of my face. Anything, of any size (bigger than your pupil) will if it's close enough - and the moon isnt at some exact distance to make this happen - could be more, could be less, it would still cover the sun. What's the stellar coincidence?

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The coincidence is the disc of the sun is the same relative size as the disc of the moon from the perspective of an earthbound observer. Its why during a total solar eclipse the surface of the sun is completely covered but features emanating from the surface(corona, prominences, etc) are not.

You can of course make your thumb appear to be the same relative size as the disc of the sun. You would have to make the decision to place your thumb at the specific distance away from your eye so that your thumb exactly covers the surface of the sun, but does not cover features emanating from that surface. If you left the distance up to chance you would likely go blind before achieving success.

Astronomers attribute this feature of a total solar eclispe as the occurence of improbable happenstance.

Stu

[Stu Pidasso]

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You're missing the point. With 10 roulette wheels spinning 24/7 2 times per minute on average you get 1.7 million spins per day. There's a 1 in 54,000 chance that any three spins will be the same as the previous spin. Therefore, 4 in a row is a routine occurence. It happens every day. The pit boss won't even notice it, much less think his wheel's broken. Of course, a wheel could be broken, but 4-in-a-row is no indication of this. A normal wheel will get 4-in-a-row frequently. It is simply not that rare or remarkable.


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Madnak, your math is wrong. At 2 spins per minute, 10 roulette wheels would only do 28800 spins a day not 1.7 million as you stipulate.

Stu

[madnak]

Ah, right, I was using seconds instead of minutes.

Regardless, it'll happen every week or so. It's nothing to write home about.

[Stu Pidasso]

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No. Astronomical long shots are expected to come in. There are so many different measurements and observations we can make in the universe that it would be strange if some of them were not weird coincidences.

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I agree that the universe is so large and there is so much to observe and measure and that we should expect to see longshots come in. However in this case we have seen a parlay of longshots come in. First is the longshot of life originating on this planet. The second longshot is life on this planet developing intelligence. The third longshot is the improbable coincidence of the same relative sizes of the disc of the moon and the disc of the sun from the perspective of the intelligent life on this planet.

After enough longshots parlay, I don't think its unreasonable to start doubting its just the result of chance. Do you?

Stu