Alan wrote: >the law of averages, if i have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown upin the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as the would land on their -<
Aaah, Alan it's not that simple: For coins the probability of getting either a head or a tail is 0.5 because the construction of a coin is such that it will not land on its side only on its head side or tail side. So if you throw coins for long enough you will find that you get heads roughly as often as tails - empiricism rocks ;) However monkeys, when thrown, land unpredictably. So in order to work out the above problem you need to consider all possible ways that a monkey can land and work out the probability value of each of these landings. If two probabilities are equal then you will be able to correctly formulate and complete the above statement. As I tip I recommend the use of either hardwearing or cheap monkeys in your experiments as I expect you will wear out a fair number of monkeys in the process of your research. cheers, Sol. [Please note: no monkeys were harmed in the writing of this e-mail!]
