Presumably a "trial of the century" must take about two weeks, and they can't overlap. Furthermore, you'd expect the time between totc's to increase according to some progression. Lets see. The probablility that any given trial will be a totc will be inversely proportional to the square of the amount of century elapsed. Oh, it's too complicated, I'll monte carlo it... peter@isengard:~$ python Python 2.1.3 (#1, Sep 7 2002, 15:29:56) [GCC 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2 Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>> import random >>> totc = 0 # trials of the century >>> tq = -100000000 # quality of current totc >>> for week in range(26 * 100): # 100 years, 26 fortnights ... ctq = random.gauss(0,1) # quality of this fortnight's big trial ... if ctq > tq: # best trial yet? ... tq = ctq ... totc += 1 ... >>> print totc 9
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-04 07:41 pm (UTC)peter@isengard:~$ python
Python 2.1.3 (#1, Sep 7 2002, 15:29:56)
[GCC 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>> import random
>>> totc = 0 # trials of the century
>>> tq = -100000000 # quality of current totc
>>> for week in range(26 * 100): # 100 years, 26 fortnights
... ctq = random.gauss(0,1) # quality of this fortnight's big trial
... if ctq > tq: # best trial yet?
... tq = ctq
... totc += 1
...
>>> print totc
9
Nine. So there you have it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-04 08:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-04 09:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-04 11:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-04 09:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-05 07:08 pm (UTC)