49
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
49 points (71.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
29588 readers
1614 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics (NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out)
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
That doesn't make sense to me. Sure, the probability in 3D is gonna get really low. Never 0 though since there is a chance the previously taken steps will be done in reverse. And since we talk about infinity here .. the drunk bird should also find home.
I was maybe a bit sloppy when I said it "quickly drops to 0" instead of it "quickly tends to 0". It'll of course always be positive - in fact if N is the sum of the absolute value of the three coordinates of its current position, the probability of returning to the origin is strictly greater than 1/6ᴺ.
But it does tend to 0 in such a way that the probability of its random walk ever returning to the starting position is not 100%. It has a 34% chance of ever getting back at the very start of its journey - but if it gets too far off track that probability is going to tend to 0 fast enough that it's not likely to ever make it back, even with infinitely many steps. Here's a youtube video (that I did not watch myself) that seems to go over the topic.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=iH2kATv49rc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.