Submitted by thenewyorktimes t3_118dfxq in nyc
Lalalama t1_j9j2j8u wrote
Reply to comment by IIAOPSW in 2 Teens’ Deaths Underscore Dangers of ‘Subway Surfing’ by thenewyorktimes
Yeah but if you do it everyday you get better at it. Say you remember the dangerous points etc. if you stop, you might forget thrmc
IIAOPSW t1_j9j4ovk wrote
Yes. I implicitly assumed events were uncorrelated to make the math simple to understand and simple to explain. Its a sketch not a photograph. What you're describing is an optimization problem wherein the chance of failure P is some function of the trials per time frame n. So if you're doing it n times per week then the probability of not dying in a given week is (1-p(n))^n . The obvious question to ask is what is p(n)? Well we know some properties it must have. It has to only be decreasing in n (it shouldn't be possible to get worse with more experience). It has to have a diminishing return and eventually stop getting smaller with n (you can't get better than 0% chance of failure). It has to be smooth (your skill doesn't change in sudden discrete jumps). The obvious candidate distribution for this is exponential decay. e^{-rn} * (p_0 - p_inf) + p_inf where p_0 is the absolute worst no-practice value p(0) and p_inf is the is the absolute best attainable value. r is just some constant that determines how quickly the practice pays off. Now based on the assumptions so far the probability of dying in a given time frame becomes (1-e^{-rn} * (p_0 - p_inf) - p_inf)^n. The last step is to just take the derivative with respect to n and set it to 0. I'm tired so exercise for the reader yada yada.
cringecaptainq t1_j9kdgyp wrote
I appreciated your prob-stats breakdown of this.
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