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- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!rpi!newsserver.pixel.kodak.com!psinntp!psinntp!kepler1!andrew
- From: andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
- Newsgroups: sci.math
- Subject: Re: measures of the `size' of infinite sets
- Message-ID: <1240@kepler1.rentec.com>
- Date: 13 Sep 92 23:23:17 GMT
- References: <1992Sep8.134624.11005@newstand.syr.edu> <1992Sep10.014652.9016@infodev.cam.ac.uk> <18nem0INN2vg@function.mps.ohio-state.edu>
- Organization: Renaissance Technologies Corp., Setauket, NY.
- Lines: 29
-
- In article <18nem0INN2vg@function.mps.ohio-state.edu> edgar@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Gerald Edgar) writes:
- >Here is an exercise (alleged to work, I haven't done it...):
- >Take the front page of the New York Times. Write down in decimal form
- >all of the numbers mentioned. Then about 30% of the numbers will
- >begin with the digit '1'.
-
- I claim this doesn't do - but I won't spoil the problem yet.
-
- >Or, take an atlas, and look up the lengths of the rivers (in km).
- >About 30% of them begin with the digit '1'. Repeat, using miles.
- >Still 30%.
-
- This might do better. I gave an undergraduate lecture on this one when
- I was at U.B. The lecture following me in the series (by Pierre Gaillard)
- was a very interesting consideration of the Buffon needle problem, and
- how it is nearly certain that early investigators who claimed to compute
- pi by this method cheated, and we know this because they claimed that
- they were able to get too many digits of pi.
-
- Putting these two problems together, you get the question, _how well should
- the river measurements agree to the '30%' theory?_ (i.e. is measuring rivers
- a 'good' way to compute '30%'?)
-
- Suppose that instead of rivers, we consider lengths of coastlines (in the
- sense of L. F. Richardson's classic "what is the length of...") is there a
- '30%' theory for coastlines?
-
- Later,
- Andrew Mullhaupt
-