Vale.

Sad to hear of the death of Carol Barnes. Television is a powerful medium and allows us to invite people into our homes as it were, and particularly with people we see regularly and who talk directly to us, like newsreaders, we come to establish a sort of personal relationship with them, so it's like losing a close acquaintance. Silly, I know, but...

Monty Hall.

This is a continuation of the previous posts under this title.
So you've chosen Door A, Monty Hall has opened Door B and shown it to be empty, and you have now announced your intention to swop to Door C, having calculated that this gives you a two-out-of-three chance of winning the car. At this point, let's suppose a new contestant is introduced - call him or her Contestant II. They have never seen this game before, and have been in a sound-proof booth up until now, so have no idea of what's going on. They are simply presented with a closed door, an open door and a closed door, and told that behind one of the closed doors is a car, which they will win if they pick the correct door. They choose Door C. What is their chance of success? Well, they will have no reason to think that the car is behind one door any more than the other, so they'll go eeny-meeny-miny-moe, and pick Door C with a 50-50 chance. So here's the paradox - you have both picked Door C, but you have a two-thirds chance of being right, whereas they only have a one-half chance of being right. How can this be? To explain this, we have to look rather more deeply into just what probability means, and how it works, and we'll do that next time.

Front-line troops.

Two recent news stories - in Salford, traffic wardens are being kitted out with head-cams, in response to the increased levels of abuse and threats to which they are being subjected, and in Peterborough, RAF personnel are being advised not to wear their uniforms, as that is likely to lead to verbal abuse. Two examples of shooting the pianist because you don't like the tune. Traffic wardens are not responsible for parking regulations, any more than service personnel are responsible for foreign policy, but the problem is that those who are responsible are not get-at-able, so any frustration or anger is taken out on the "pianist". Perhaps the point is that if the problem is that serious, those who are responsible should stick their heads above the parapet and take the flak themselves, and perhaps reconsider the policies which have led to the problem.

Right on!!

You may have seen this before, but I've only just come across it, and it's so good feel I must share. It's a quotation by one Larry Hardiman -

The word "politics" is derived from the word "poly" meaning "many", and the word "ticks" meaning "blood sucking parasites".

By the way, I've not been able to find out anything about Mr. Hardiman - I assume he's a writer? If anyone has any info, I would be interested.

Ah, the practicalities.....

As an addendum to yesterday's post, my grandson (see post dated 3rd January) has turned out to be one of the 20% who have not got a place at their first-choice school (just what have they got against our family? - this isn't the first time this has happened!). Quite apart from his obvious disappointment, and the fact that this means he will be losing touch with most of his mates, it also means that I, as driver of the school-run car, will now be faced with the problem of getting three grandchildren to three different schools in three different directions - thanks a bunch, folks!

Annual rant.

I know I bang on about this every year, but it's something I find totally unacceptable and exasperating. Official figures this year suggest that around 20% - that's 1 in 5 folks - of children will not get a place at the secondary school of their (or their parents') first choice. This year, things have been made even more uncertain by the use by some schools (and approved by Government) of a lottery system to decide who gets in and who doesn't. A Schools Minister was on the box yesterday, supporting such a system, saying that it gave everybody the same chance of getting into a good school. Of course, what he didn't say was that it equally gave everybody the same chance of failing to get into a good school. The answer, as I have said before, is for LEAs to work out well in advance what the likely demand will be for places at their schools, and to make sure that the appropriate resources are in place to meet that demand. It's so bloody obvious, isn't it?

What's in a name?

According to one of the more tabloid tabloids, Prince Harry has called for round-the-clock armed protection for his "lover" Chelsy Davy - is there something we should know??

Unbelievable!

This has got to be a wind-up, hasn't it? In order to beef up our immigration controls, we have a new and dedicated Border and Immigration Agency specifically to police those coming into the country. But it now appears that at weekends and bank holidays, only a minimum skeleton staff will be on duty to man the 'phones, and no checks or arrests will be made. So we're hoping that illegal immigrants don't work weekends, are we?

Monty Hall

This is a continuation of the previous post under this title.

Most people reason that, as there are now only two doors the car can be behind, it's a 50-50 chance, and therefore swopping doors makes no difference. In fact, the answer is, you should swop doors, because by so doing, you double your chances of winning the car. Perhaps the easiest way of explaining it is like this - you started out with three doors, and assuming the car is put behind one of these doors at random, you have a one-in-three chance of picking the right door. I think (hope) we can all agree on that. But this means that there is a two-in-three chance that you are wrong - that the car is somewhere else. At this point, that "somewhere else" is either Door B or door C. But once Monty Hall opens Door B and shows the car is not there, that "somewhere else" has to be Door C. You still have - always had and always will have - a one-third chance of choosing the right door in the first place, but if you were wrong (two-thirds chance) you now know where the car is! So swop doors.

But next time we'll look at what happens if we introduce a new contestant into the mix........

Our very own Rambo?

I'm at a loss to understand the media's attitude toward Prince Harry being in Afghanistan. Top story on the TV news, most of the dailies have devoted several pages to it - but why? The tabloids seem to be treating him as some sort of John Wayne type hero, taking on the Taliban single-handed - indeed one paper has him killing 30 of them, and it's only when you read the small print as it were that you discover that what he did was to call in a few air-strikes which may have resulted in that many casualties. If I were a serving soldier over there - even more if I were a close relative of someone who's been killed over there, I would be spitting blood at the way everybody else is being treated as a bit player in the Prince Harry Show - and if I read him right, I bet he doesn't like it either. We do seem to lose all sense of proportion at times.