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Oct 19, 2010 21:35

A and B both pick a random integer separately. What is the probability that A and B end up with the same integer ( Read more... )

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thlaylirah October 19 2010, 21:52:18 UTC
"almost surely not" would be the correct answer...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely

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ancal October 20 2010, 02:11:43 UTC
It is also "impossible" to pick a random integer out of an infinite number of integers. (My math prof was very adamant about this today. "You cannot sum an infinite number of terms. That's just nonsense.")

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dnwq October 20 2010, 02:55:14 UTC
You may find this and this interesting.

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ancal October 20 2010, 04:30:25 UTC
What I'm saying is that when dealing with infinities, many quantities are well-defined only if you take limits. So you have to be careful with definitions.

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dnwq October 20 2010, 04:40:00 UTC
Yes :P

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kaoyi__ October 20 2010, 02:15:23 UTC
interesting. how are your math class structured?

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chris_nysb October 21 2010, 05:44:37 UTC
i don't have have the necessary background but i'm going to pick out things. if i'm asking non-helpful questions, you can direct me to links that show that what i have queries about are mathematically accepted.

1. isn't the first condition "A and B both pick a random integer separately." not infinity because we technically don't have the capability to "pick" a number from an infinite number of numbers? i.e. if we were to pick a number that is the result of 46777^4343+1, we would actually be physically incapable of first, conceptualizing the number, and second, just physically rendering the number in an encapsulat-able form.

2. if we say that numbers run on forever, then we can't pick all numbers, because some numbers run to infinity, and we can't pick those because they don't have a limit and therefore are not numbers that can be pointed to as objects ( ... )

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