Grammar Nazis - public service or public enemy?

tailwindhome

nickthetrick wrote:

The fact that #20 remains unopened tells you there's a 1 in 2 chance of it being the prize.

Why can the same statement not be made in relation to #1?

notsoblue

Greg66 wrote:

[When the host opens the door, he does so knowing that he will reveal a goat. His is a non-random selection. Your choice of Door #1 is random.

Geddit?

How does all this change the fact that n has reduced to 2 from 3?

Agent57

notsoblue wrote:

How does all this change the fact that n has reduced to 2 from 3?

But n was 3 when you made your choice. So originally you had a 1/3 chance of picking the car. The host opening the door isn't actually relevant, is it?.

Another way of looking at is this, I think:

You pick door 1.

Without opening a door, the host says "OK, now you may keep your door, or swap it for the other two doors." Obviously, you'd probably swap, because 2/3 is better than 1/3. Then after you've swapped for the 2 doors, the host opens one of them. It might have a goat behind, or nothing; but the chance that the car is behind the second of your 2 doors is still 2/3.

Even if the host opens one of the 2 doors before you swap, you are still essentially swapping a 1/3 chance for a 2/3 chance.

At least, that's how it appears to me, but I'm not a statistician, mathematician, or otherwise expert on probability.

notsoblue

Agent57 wrote:

notsoblue wrote:

How does all this change the fact that n has reduced to 2 from 3?

But n was 3 when you made your choice. So originally you had a 1/3 chance of picking the car. The host opening the door isn't actually relevant, is it?.

Another way of looking at is this, I think:

You pick door 1.

Without opening a door, the host says "OK, now you may keep your door, or swap it for the other two doors." Obviously, you'd probably swap, because 2/3 is better than 1/3. Then after you've swapped for the 2 doors, the host opens one of them. It might have a goat behind, or nothing; but the chance that the car is behind the second of your 2 doors is still 2/3.

Even if the host opens one of the 2 doors before you swap, you are still essentially swapping a 1/3 chance for a 2/3 chance.

At least, that's how it appears to me, but I'm not a statistician, mathematician, or otherwise expert on probability.

Yep, I totally understand how you come up with 2/3. Its sound statistics. But why is your original choice still relevant if new information (that n has been reduced to 2) has been introduced?

tailwindhome

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

Agent57

notsoblue wrote:

But why is your original choice still relevant if new information (that n has been reduced to 2) has been introduced?

Because you made your original choice when there were 3 doors. The chance you had picked the car was 1 in 3. Is doesn't suddenly change to 1 in 2 because one of the other doors has been opened. So by swapping to the unopened door, you're still swapping 1 in 3 for 2 in 3; it just happens that one of the 2 has already been opened.

The situation you seem to be thinking of, I think, is if the host opened a door with a goat behind, then randomly allocated the car to one of the two remaining doors and asked you to make a fresh selection. In that case I think it would be 50:50, because the open door with the goat is no longer relevant - the system has been reset by the shuffling.

sketchley

Is this still going?

Try and think of this in the context of deal or no deal, except one box has £500,000 the rest nothing.

You pick a box so 1/20 chance it's got the money.

You then pick another box at random, still 1/20 it doesn't have the money so you eliminate that box.

Next box is then 1/19 then 1/18 so on and so on until you either find the money (game over) or you get to the final two boxes where because you have been picking randomly the odds are indeed 50/50 on both boxes so it doesn't matter which you pick. You should also note that there is an 18/20 chance you would not get to this point as you would have found the money earlier.

Now consider the same except that you pick the first box then Noel who knows where the money is picks 18 of the remaining boxes. Both you and he know he will not pick the box with the money in so it's not random. When you get to the last 2 boxes your box is still 1/20 his is 19/20 so pick his. You should note that there is a 100% chance you will get to this point in the game.

That is the difference. The gameshow host knows where the car is and is not allowed to pick. So it stops being random.

In the original question had the gameshow host picked his door at random and picked the goat then the odds on either door would have been 50/50. He would also have had the chance to find the car at which point the game would end and you would be asked the to swap.

sketchley

Greg66 wrote:

Bad Sketchley. Very bad Sketchley.

sketchley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_djTy3G0pg

mitchell_inman

I was doing fine with the grammar, but the stats - Noooooooo!!!

I really am thick :oops:

wgwarburton

TailWindHome wrote:

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

Ah! Now that makes more sense!

Really interesting.. thanks very much, guys! :-)

Cheers,
W.

tailwindhome

I genuinely couldn't get my head around that until I tried this website with a simulation of the game. I understood your explanations - I think I just couldn't accept them.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08monty.html#

25 games, always picking door one and 'not switching' resulted in a 32% win rate


So this nonsense about the Earth being a sphere and some magical force keeping us from floating away?

Cleat Eastwood

this thread reminds of...

KID: Sir, I ain't got no pencil.

TEACH: No, johnny its not I ain't, it's I have no. I have no pencils, he has no pencils, she has no pencils...

KID: So who's nicked all the pencils then?

Aye than you.

solsurf

SimonAH wrote:

solsurf wrote:

In a forum it shouldn't matter.

Surely that is the salient point? In a forum the number of indicators are tiny compared to a face to face assessment, ergo your turn of phrase carries far higher weight. Therefore it does matter - and matters far more than elsewhere.

How much value to you apply to the poorly written argument as compared to the well structured argument? You are judging whether or not you are aware that you are doing so.

Whatever, ergo sum right

And; for the stats question, its best to change to two, as the host is positively not choosing two, ergo it ain't 50:50

gtvlusso

Grammar Nazis: definitely the anemone.....

greg66_tri_v2.0

TailWindHome wrote:

I genuinely couldn't get my head around that until I tried this website with a simulation of the game. I understood your explanations - I think I just couldn't accept them.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08monty.html#

25 games, always picking door one and 'not switching' resulted in a 32% win rate


So this nonsense about the Earth being a sphere and some magical force keeping us from floating away?

And it never once occurred to you that it would be child's play to rig the doors so that the results tend to one third over time...

You know, the Giants Causeway ... there really are giants living there ... honest!

tailwindhome

Greg66 wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

I genuinely couldn't get my head around that until I tried this website with a simulation of the game. I understood your explanations - I think I just couldn't accept them.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08monty.html#

25 games, always picking door one and 'not switching' resulted in a 32% win rate


So this nonsense about the Earth being a sphere and some magical force keeping us from floating away?

And it never once occurred to you that it would be child's play to rig the doors so that the results tend to one third over time...

You know, the Giants Causeway ... there really are giants living there ... honest!

You have the cold cynical heart of a man who practices law.

You do realise I still have doubts about this theory don't you?

Jay dubbleU

The point is however that this isn't purely maths - the host is manipulating the result by revealing the initial goat - it appears he is helping the contestant whereas in fact he is doing the opposite

dhope

Jay dubbleU wrote:

The point is however that this isn't purely maths - the host is manipulating the result by revealing the initial goat - it appears he is helping the contestant whereas in fact he is doing the opposite

Sigh.

It is purely maths, the host has no choice. Don't argue, read up. If you disagree you're wrong, read more, if you still disagree, read more... sorry.

deptfordmarmoset

gtvlusso wrote:

Grammar Nazis: definitely the anemone.....

ms and ns have been a source of confusion to me since childhood. I think it started when I first saw the word ''emnity'' on the page. Either a misreading or a typo, I don't know, but not wanting to make emenies, I have to make a real conscious effort to get it right.

But once there's a moment of doubt in your mind about where the ms and ns go, anemone is the worst word in the whole world. Is it anenome or anemone? I've spent hours worrying about these damn plants because my mind goes blank...or is it my nimd?...I wish they'd never been given a mane.

sketchley

Went to a screening of Lif of Brian last night introduced by Terry Jones, when it got to this bit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8 I was reminded of this thread.

rjsterry

Why was I not informed of this thread?

I have some reading to do.

rjsterry

I'm coming in a little late to this, and find myself rather torn on the issue. My mum in particular is very definitely a GN and I was constantly picked up on it as a child (still am, too). However, whilst my state education was generally very good, I went to school at a time when the fashion was to prioritise the 'creative' aspect of English over the teaching of proper grammar and punctuation, and so like many on here, I have had to teach myself a fair bit. More on this bit below.

I've inherited my mum's GN tendencies, but tend to opt for digging my nails into my palms and gritting my teeth rather than correcting people.

Greg66 wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

DDD vs Gregory

Greg66 wrote:

Think of it this way. You are browsing ebay for a bike. You see two adverts. One is grammatically correct, and contains no misspellings. The other looks like it was written with Scrabble tiles then shaken around a bit. It is littered with grammatical errors.

Both sellers appear to be selling the same type of bike, in apparently the same condition. The substance of what they have said is broadly the same.

Whose auction will you bid on?

The context, in this case the environment, is different. I agree that as the importance of the circumstance increases (i.e. an ebay advert) then the need for good grammar equally becomes more important.

However, I would argue that in an informal environment, where conversation can flitter from one point to another, the importance is centred around understanding the point itself with a reduced focus on how well the point is constructed.

When reading a post there is a moment where the point is understood and good grammar becomes secondary to the overall importance of the point being made.

Greg66 wrote:

I agree that is doesn't detract from the objective validity of the point, however, it will affect adversely how validity of the point is subjectively perceived by the audience. If you have two protagonists, with equally valid arguments, the one who expresses their point poorly will suffer for it.

That is very much dependant on the audience. Perception is a variable that cannot be measured so I think, dare I say, that your point is moot.

As I said above, in an informal conversation once the point is made and understood by the audience then you get diminishing returns on how well the sentence is constructed. This is different from a Court of Law, for example, where emotive responses are driven by the eloquence of the argument delivered and it is partly that skill that wins the case.

My issue is that I cannot escape the fact that this is just an Internet forum and while I agree with your view on good grammar, even though I struggle with it myself, there is limit to how useful it is going to be in an informal mostly jovial written context.

There is also the audience itself, you cannot determine the audiences reaction. Perhaps they will be sympathetic to the person with bad grammar, perhaps they will exert a measure of understanding or make extra effort to understand the point he/she is making. This has been seen in this thread where you have the 'grammar nazis' and the 'broken English resistance'. It's not always as clear cut as who writes the best wins.

So to claim that a post with good grammar and punctuation will outweigh a post with bad grammar, in an arena where grammar isn't necessarily important in the eyes of the audience, I think is a little off if not completely wrong.

You're right that the context of possibly parting with money is different to that of a forum. The ebay example is at one end of a spectrum.

It is, nonetheless, illustrative of the point. The thrust of your argument is (in essence) to concede that the quality of a person's grammar has an effect; but in the context of a forum the weight is de minimis.

Now that's where we part company. Even within a forum there are varying contexts. In a thread which is more of less banter, the quality of grammar may be close to de minimis. But even within such a thread, you might want to drop a clever or funny joke. Get the grammar right, and it works. Make your reader have to re-read it, and, well, not many jokes are funny when you have to solve them first.

At the other end of the forum context there are relatively serious debates: eg how to improve the safety of cyclists alongside HGVs at junctions. In my view this is a sufficiently important matter to warrant getting your message across clearly.

I've come to the conclusion since posting this thread that I am, in fact, a bit of a closet Grammar Nazi. I don't relentlessly correct every last error I see. I do notice the errors though, and there is a part of me that quietly tuts when I see them.

Oh Greg! How could you?

Looking this one up has confirmed a point that I was about to make (to CiB in particular): the Rules are not really rules at all, but, more accurately, conventions. Comma use has varied over the centuries. Some Victorians scattered them like confetti through interminable sentences. Now the fashion is for shorter sentences. Sometimes following one of the Rules leads to a sentence that is less clear and, from a poetic point of view, clunky. The opening lines of Star Trek being a famous example: the 'correct' phrasing doesn't gain any clarity and sounds downright awkward.

To use a point I made when discussing art with DDD, perspective has very clear mathematical rules. However, some great paintings incorporate perspectival 'mistakes' because the resulting composition is more balanced and transmits the meaning of the painting more clearly than a 'correct' version would.

That said, if I have to re-read a post three or four times to work out what is being said, then the bad grammar is very definitely getting in the way.

greg66_tri_v2.0

Waddido? Waddisay? It wasn't me! It was someone else! They went that way!

Clever Pun

There's no way I have time or the inclination to read this whole thread so...

Correcting grammar etc is only really a bugbear of mine if it's used when certain users are having an argument as a form of point scoring... deal with the issue rather than being a prick.

If it's done day to day chit chat it can be funny.

Except for the misuse of they're and their, that's just so damned irritating

oh and I'd buy the misspelt ebay posting as less people would have found it and therefore less competition... the seller loses here to due a lack of intelligence or due dilligence... probably the latter

DonDaddyD

The misuse of then and than.

That one gets me all the time and that's ME saying that. :shock:

secretsam

No-one should apologise for using language correctly.

People who don't like it can just go back to illiterately texting their fellow primates.

I have spoken.

Confusedboy

I'll admit to having an issue with this sort of thing; not so much grammer and puntuation, mistakes in which I can live with, but spelling errors. Common ones on this forum include 'peddle' for 'pedal' and 'break' for 'brake'. I will by default consider any view expressed by people who make such errors as less worthy of my appraisal, and that is something which borders on intolerance when I examine it.

This is my problem and I'm working on it. The solution may be for me to accept that I am ridiculously irritated by spelling errors of that sort, and also that a lack of education does not neccessarily equate to stupitdity.