Thursday October 29, 2020

– Gibbous Moon Phase – step out, take action, breaking away, expression

– Moon in Aries

– Retrograde Planets: Neptune, Chiron, Uranus, Mars, Mercury

– Best Days (from the Farmer’s Almanac) – October 28th – 29th – Bake, Cut Firewood, Mow to Increase Growth, Dig Holes, Kill Plant Pests

– Gardening tips (from the Farmer’s Almanac) – October28th – 29th – Barren days, do no planting.

– Aspect of the Aeon Sophia: (Wisdom): Kali (The Destroyer of Time), Tara (Goddess who Guides Through Troubles) and Shodashi (Goddess who Fulfills our Highest Desire)

– Aspect of the Aeon Thelete: (Will/Desire): Elias, God of the West, God of Transformation

– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Month – New Moon in Leo: “A third wing on the left side of a butterfly” (& An open window and a net curtain blowing into a cornucopia)

– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Year: “A Triangle with Wings”

SUN: 7 SCORPIO: Deep sea divers

EARTH: 7 TAURUS: A woman of Samaria comes to draw water from the well

The Gamblers Fallacy – Believing that “runs” occur to statistically independent phenomena, such as a roulette wheel spins.

I had an advanced statistics professor in college who delighted in giving gambling examples for statistics problems. He would use black jack, or dice or roulette. He would come up with a data set and ask us to analyze it to see if any statistical significance could be gleaned from it. And eventually calculate the odds. (The odds actually had no significance to the class. He just enjoyed it.)

This was back in the 1980’s before there were any decent statistical modelling computer programs. You could program in SAS. They taught it to us even though they knew spreadsheets were just about to blow it’s usefulness out of the water. But it was incredibly labor intensive and usually filled with errors. You often spent more time proofing errors than analyzing the data.

What is random?

Random is the term used to describe that 2 events have absolutely no correlation. You roll a six sided die once. You have an equal chance of the number coming up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. If you roll it a second time, the chance is still equal. People start to get confused because they will think that if you roll a “1” on the first roll, that the chances that you will get another “1” is somehow less. It is not.

You can change the question however. If you were to ask, “If you roll the die twice, what is the chance (probability) that you will roll a “1” on both rolls?” This is a wholly different question. With a whole different set of probabilities than the first question.

But it is similar enough, that a crafty wordsmith to use the argument to their advantage.

Also know that we are also dealing with other possibilities when you face multiple trials interacting with multiple variables. Then you can start working with Game Theory and Chaos Theory. Statistics is the study of large numbers and amounts of things – somehow being able to describe and make sense of these large numbers.

I believe the sames Stats teacher who had this obsession also would often note that, “The Lottery is Taxation for People Who Failed Math.”

What we must remember with the Gambler’s Fallacy is that numbers and statistics are often used to make points during discussion and discourse. And when they can find favorable statistics, they will be used to make points that may not be valid. We must pay attention.