(August 14, 2016 at 9:57 am)pocaracas Wrote: I just know that I had great math teachers throughout my learning cycle... except for probabilities... could never get a good hang of those.
I got better at math because my father was so painfully slow and witless as a tutor that it encouraged my self reliance. If I asked him for help I'd have to sit there while he read (at least) the chapter before and tried out several problems himself. Funny but the reason I liked probabilities was the reason he hated them. He insisted there must be a decision procedure which would be applicable to all such problems but he just didn't understand it. I like probabilities precisely because it seems each situation must be analyzed afresh. I suspect though that if anyone acquired enough experience solving probability problems eventually they would distill a decision procedure that would pretty much handle all comers. But one would have to have acquired great expertise to get to the point where those relationships were transparent.
