RE: numerical mriacle.....again
April 29, 2014 at 11:21 am
(This post was last modified: April 29, 2014 at 11:29 am by Angrboda.)
(April 28, 2014 at 6:27 pm)thequestion Wrote: And no, "you dont find patterns everywhere" .
Quote:A typical result in Ramsey theory states that if some mathematical object is partitioned into finitely many parts, then one of the parts must contain a subobject of an interesting kind.
— Wolfram MathWorld: Ramsey Theory
Quote: The problem appears to be two-fold: one is that “the very nature of randomness assures us that combing random data will yield some patterns,” and that “if the data set is large enough, coincidences are sure to appear,” (Martin, 1998). More generally, this can be summed up by the Ramsey theory (Graham and Spencer, 1990) in which Frank P. Ramsey proved mathematically that “Complete disorder is an impossibility… [e]very large set of numbers, points or objects necessarily contains a highly regular pattern.” If humans are pattern seekers, and randomness necessarily contains patterns, then we’ve arrived at our first stumbling block.(emphasis added)
— Apophenia: Definition and Analysis
So despite your intuitions, yes, if you have enough data points, you will find patterns, though the patterns will have no meaning.