Sunday, April 30, 2006

Travels of the Myopic Juice Hunter (Chapt 2)

Nearsighted as he might be, our Myopic Hero was unfazed.

He committed all his resources to a journey that would take him to the Land of the Fog, to find the mythical Tree of the Life Juice.

As he walked, he noticed the geological formations below his web-toed feet.

Mother Nature, it seems had followed a strange pattern. There were rocks of all sizes, large and small. However, the largest of the large never seemed to exceed a certain size. And for every large there were many more smalls.

Why even a bird brain could understand that once all the largest marbles had been removed from the pool there would only remain the smaller of the geological formations. And once the the bigger of those remainders were removed, there would only remain the smaller of what Mother Nature had created.

It was a simple truth. He was still a long way off from the crazed frenzy of Fog Land. This basic concept seemed clear as a desert oasis to our intrepid voyager. Soon, however, he would forget himself as he fell into the drunken world of the Life Juice.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hat tip to Roberto for this on the central limit theorem.

Briefly, its like the Bell shaped curve in college where most people in a class get a "C" and only a few extraordinary ones get an "A". Think of A+ grades as the mega finds of oil wells like Sudia Arabia's Ghawar field. Think of "F" grades as those wells that are not even worth drilling because they are too small and of inferior quality.

Note there are a finite number of students in the class. Once you've gone through all the A students you will not find anything better than B students, then C's and finally the F's.