The Pagoda Palace

I finally got around to watching the Order of the Phoenix last night. I liked it, but it must be pretty incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't read the book. They took a lot of liberties with the story. Neville found the room or requirement - wtf? Harry read Snape's mind instead of using the penseive. And there was no quidditch. And no Mundungous Fletcher. A different style of film, more British. It felt rushed. I think there was just too much in the book. The film just couldn't do it justice.

We went out with friends yesterday for lunch to a local Chinese place, the Pagoda Palace. Loads of people were there for Sunday lunch. I was quite surprised. I think about 80% of the customers were Asian. I felt quite foreign. Good lunch however, and Dumpy was very well behaved, even though his little friend wasn't so good. He's been eating like a pig for he last couple of days, which is good I guess. He's still quite slim though. I wish he was a bit fatter.

All the trains were held up this morning and I arrived late for work. I thought it was because the country was battered with storms last night, but in fact two trains in a row broke down, and there were signal problems apparently. There would be rioting in the bloody streets if this happened in Japan.

OK the maths problem I mentioned in the last entry wasn't popular. But I'm going to give you an explanation whether you like it or not. To recap; I offer you three boxes, one has a diamond inside, the other two are empty. You can choose one box, and keep the diamond if it's inside. So you pick a box, but before you open it, I tell you I am going to open one of the other boxes. And when I do, I show you that it's empty. So I ask you if you want to keep the box you have, or swap with the other sealed box. What do you do?

I told you that statistically you had twice the chance of winning the diamond if you elect to swap boxes. In other words, you have 1 in 3 chance of wining the diamond with your first choice and a 2 in 3 chance if you swap. How can this be? Two boxes, should be 50-50 shouldn't it? Well no, one way to look at it would be to tell yourself that the diamond is in one of the two remaining boxes. You know this because I took away an empty one. You have a 100% chance of winning if you could choose both boxes, and you know that the first choice yields only a 33.3% chance, so the other must be 66.6%.

Or, you can look at it by saying that there is a 33.3% chance that the diamond is in the box you first chose, and a 66.6% chance that it is in one of the other boxes. Since I always take away an empty box, the remaining box will always contain the diamond unless you chose right first time. In other words, in 66.6% of cases the diamond is not in your box and, after I've removed an empty one, it must be in the other box. Apparently this causes arguments even between mathematicians.

This caused some friction between mathematicians in the office this morinng.