Wallace:David:Infinite Jest:279:math errors (Dan Schmidt)

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wallace-l 26 April 1996:

(p. 279) [About the tennis match between E.T.A. and P.W.T.A.] A 54-match-all conclusion is extremely unlikely - odds being 1 in 2^27 - and has never happened in nine years.

In fact, the odds of the match ending 54-54 are much much higher than 1 in 2^27, although it's still unlikely. Just to quickly show that it's wrong, without getting into binomial coefficients and stuff, given that there are only 109 possible outcomes, (0-108 up to 108-0), it doesn't make any sense that a pretty regular outcome like 54-54 (certainly more probable than 107-1) would have odds of less than 1 in 109.

Dan Schmidt | dfan@[omitted] | http://www2.lglass.com/~dfan