Is Marilyn Vos Savant wrong on this probability question?

[Hurkyl]

Ah, she still doesn't get it. And I doubt she will, because she's in that situation where she has a correct conclusion with a terrible argument.

Why do I say she has the right answer? Because I have incredibly high prior odds on her choosing 11111111111111111111 as the fake sequence -- much less than the odds on her choosing 44132411666623551133 -- and so it's far more likely that 11111111111111111111 is the fake.

 

[Bacle2]

I think one of the posters there has a good point: Marilyn does not make any testable claims, nor calculations, which makes it (unnecessarily) hard to test her arguments.

 

[micromass]

I think one of the posters there has a good point: Marilyn does not make any testable claims, nor calculations, which makes it (unnecessarily) hard to test her arguments.

Yes. I suppose we can all agree on that. If she would describe an experiment unambiguously, then it would be easily resolved what the correct answer was.

 

[WWGD]

"Yes. I suppose we can all agree on that. If she would describe an experiment unambiguously, then it would be easily resolved what the correct answer was."

I think that depends on whether you are Bayesian or Frequentist. Maybe someone knows more about this.

 

[chiro]

Ah, she still doesn't get it. And I doubt she will, because she's in that situation where she has a correct conclusion with a terrible argument.

Why do I say she has the right answer? Because I have incredibly high prior odds on her choosing 11111111111111111111 as the fake sequence -- much less than the odds on her choosing 44132411666623551133 -- and so it's far more likely that 11111111111111111111 is the fake.

Absolutely agree with your statement: The conclusion makes sense under one interpretation (which I have been debating for a while and finally clarified eventually), but her argument just doesn't make sense to me about the past and future.

Remember folks, this is what you get when debates continue and consume people when the issue at hand is vaguely described or not really described at all!