…and I don’t know which possibility is the least worrying

  • BallShapedMan@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Don’t be fooled by randomness. Randomness comes in clumps. For example if you flipped a thousand coins every day for a year and measured how each one predicted the stock market, heads for up, tails for down, at the end of the year you’ll likely have one coin that far out performs the average. But would you use that coin to determine your investment strategy the next year?

    And yeah Boeing is now killing people outside of their planes.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Not really. That is just a fact that there’s only 365 days, and the more samples you make increases the odds it’s a sample that overlaps with another (there are fewer unique options).

        What the OP is saying is that sometimes randomness can appear less random than other randomness. True randomness will occasionally give results that closely match something non-random. It’s why almost all music players don’t use true random for shuffle. True random you could have the same song play 15 times in a row. In fact, that is expected to happen eventually (assuming infinite time) just as all other sets of 15 songs are.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The birthday paradox derives from how the chance of somebody there having their birthday on a specific day is 1-in-365 (ish)/nr-of-people hence the chance of two people having their birthday on that specific day is 1-in-365^2/nr-of-people, but the chance of two people having their birthday in the same day out of any days of the year is quite different because it’s not a specific day anymore so it’s quite a different calculation (which I totally forgot ;)).

        In here the closest to that paradox would the chance of 2 whistleblowers of any company with whistleblowers dying within a few weeks of each other (which, depending on how many companies have whistleblowers, can be quite high) compared to the chance of 2 whistleblowers of Boeing dying within a few weeks of each other (which is statistically a lot lower unless there are thousands of Boeing whistleblowers).

        Edit: actually it’s more the chance of any 2 Boeing whistleblowers dying with a few weeks of each other at any point in time (so this includes long after they did it) vs the chance of any 2 Boeing whistleblowers dying with a few weeks of each other during the time they are blowing the whilstle.

        • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          The probability of 2 people having the same birthday is 1 in 365 because it’s the same as picking person A’s birthday as a specific day in the year and checking whether person B has their birthday on that date.

          Now, the reason the number is so low is that you are basically comparing pairs and with 23 people there are 253 different pairings (23 choose 2 or 22*23/2). With each pair having a 1/365 chance to have the same birthday and having 253 distinct pairs, you would have to fail a 1/365 check 253 times in a row. The formula you can use for the success rate is 1 - (1-p)^x with p being the probability and x the number of trials, so in this case

          1 - (1 - 1/365)^253 = 0.5004

          In essence, the unintuitive part of the “paradox” is how fast the number of possible pairs grows the more people you add.

    • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      But given the choice between coins you’d still most likely pick the one that was successful, even if its 99% chance its nonsense - the other coins would have 99.9% (made up numbers).

      So out of our analogy, we can’t be sure beyond resonable doubt to arrest Boeing, but a message has clearly been sent to any future whistleblowers

      • BallShapedMan@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It takes a ton of bravery to be a whistle blower when others aren’t dying like 80 year old diabetes patients. It’ll take even more now, and I hope there are more. Boeing needs to be kicked in the bags.

    • RampageDon@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Idk if we have any NYJ fans in here, but 2 years ago the coin meme was born. One fan flipped the same quarter every game to predict a win or a loss. It was correct for like the first 7 or so games of the season. It was a pretty wild ride predicting some unpredictable upsets for the jets for both wins and loses.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    The latest death was due to disease (flu and MSRA, leading to pneumonia and apparently a stroke), though, and his family confirmed as such. Many of these whistle-blowers are older experienced engineers who will be biased towards a higher death rate.

    Still, fuck Boeing though. The first suicide remains suspect. Corporate scumbags.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Many of these whistle-blowers are older experienced engineers who will be biased towards a higher death rate.

      This, plus being highly involved in any court case is extremely stressful, which can take a toll on your mental and physical health.

      Which is why I’m still kinda leaning towards an actual suicide with the first case. Being stressed, tired, having your life dictated around court schedules while you sleep in hotel rooms… I could see that wearing someone down after a while.

      I just don’t think it makes real sense for a company to hire an actual hitman to operate in the US. Corporate murders happen, but usually overseas, and usually not when they’ve already testified.

      Not saying it isn’t a possibility, I just think it’d be cheaper to pay the guy off and have him sign an NDA.

      • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        A whistleblower is the type of person to refuse such an NDA, regardless of buy-off price. They would understand that if Boeing is willing to pay them 10 million or whatever, that the information they have, should they release it, prevent over 10 million dollars worth of damages to the public.

        I just don’t see someone like that committing suicide in a hotel parking lot out of state the day (two days?) before they are supposed to testify. That would go against everything they were doing up until that point.

        They wouldn’t just… go home instead?

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      Influenza B and MRSA? I’m not sure I’m convinced… but yeah. A bit different than the last death.

      • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        A viral infection causing a secondary bacterial infection is incredibly common. The phlegm and various secretions caused by the virus act as a breeding ground for the bacteria.

    • 6mementomori@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      the first suicide is not suspect, as far as I’ve heard the guy specifically said he is not suicidal JUST IN CASD something like this would happen, but that’s either not true or that fact sadly did not gain attention

    • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Still statistically significant, even with a high margin of error our only evidence points towards it being a trend

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          2 months ago

          It statistically significant because middle-aged people who were about to give evidence at a trial dying is not a common occurrence. Happening once is suspicious happening twice is extremely suspicious.

          It is not like Boeing is staffed by geriatrics on the edge of life as it is

  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    They definitely killed the first. Just learned about the second and hearing it was MRSA? So who knows. Maybe they’re borrowing some bioweapon tech from their pals at McDonnell Douglas.

    • neidu2@feddit.nlOP
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      2 months ago

      Possibly. We’ll probably see eventually, either through a myriad of deaths, or a lawsuit with a lot of witnesses.