Here is the problem.... none of us invented the Marilyn Monroe example. I brought it up on the other thread as an example of what my professor had tried to teach me some years ago. At that point all of you on the other thread mocked me when I said my professor was in error.
Yet now, on this thread where the rubber is meeting the road you want to "dumb down" the example to a form where you can find it more palatable, probable etc.
Of course we all agree that you could simplify the image so dramatically that your odds increase in achieving your results but what you are looking for is an image that is so simple that the likeness of Marilyn Monroe is subjective in nature, sorta like looking at cloud formations and then saying... "look it's a wolf eating a wolverine!". "It is?"
Let’s go back to the original issue.
In this post you originally said: “A computer that randomly generates pixels on the screen will NEVER produce a picture of Marilyn Monroe, instead it will produce meaningless snow over and over again.” You even put the “never” in caps. Include in that post is your disbelief that computers could be considered more complex than a cell. Your computer-cell comparison was not tied nearly as strongly to a timeline as the MM claim.
In response mebrainhurtz challenged you, with the proviso that the earth is the billions of years old that science thinks it is. I presume he was referring to your MM picture claim, but I could be wrong. In either case, I will have to part company with mebrainhurtz on the MM issue, at least in the time frame he encapsulated. I do not think I have said anything to support the “relatively” short time frame he said was needed.
In this post is where you flatly say your professor was wrong.
I am on your Professor’s side. Let me jump back to this thread to pursue that idea. Since Stripe seems to be willing to take on the mathematics (and I think he seems to have the right equations in hand), I will expect him to handle that end of things for you.
So, Stripe has listed 640x480 as (I presume) the number of pixels on the screen. Each pixel can have any one of 256 values (hue, intensity). He comes up with 256
640x480 as the number of possible ways the screen could be illuminated, of which only one is exactly right. Am I on target so far, Stripe?
Now, let me make the assumption that each random set of pixels remains displayed for 10 seconds, during which time we, with our perfectly calibrated eyeballs, examine it to see if it is the right one. So if we multiply the value Stripe has supplied by 10, that is how long it would take to cycle though every possible combination of pixels. Note, in saying that I am removing the “random” factor, I am simply saying if we never repeated a pattern, it would take 10x256
640x480 seconds to go through the list.
Now, and I pose this to Stripe, let’s make each selected pattern absolutely random. Let it run for 10x256
640x480 seconds. Since there is no guarantee that a given pattern (including the MM one) will show in any of the displayed patterns, is there any statistical relationship as to how likely the MM pattern will in fact show up in those 10x256
640x480 seconds?
