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To: E. Charters who wrote (13041)	6/9/2006 8:59:02 PM
From: Gib Bogle	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 78419

I have all the answers, I just can't remember which questions to match them with. Thanks for an excellent and amusing article. Mr Bayes has a lot to answer for. I have done a bit of work with decision analysis, and Monte Carlo methods are my stock in trade, so I was very tickled to see the great pure mathematician Erdos being persuaded by a computer simulation rather than by reasoning. I am a big fan for computer simulation, and the problems I work on tend to have a stochastic element. There is no doubt that human beings have a lot of difficulty with probabilistic concepts (and so do many mathematicians). I've done some teaching in the local school of engineering. All engineers have to pass some (very applied) maths courses, which include a small amount of probability and statistics. Until a year ago they could always avoid the probs stuff in the final exam, because they had to answer, say, 6 out of 7 questions, one of which was on probability. It was found that only about 10% of the class would tackle the probs question, and not only that, a large number were not even attending the relevant lectures. Since it is plain that some grasp of probability concepts is very useful for an engineer, the exam policy has been changed, making the probs question compulsory. The main weakness of decision analysis in real decision contexts is that you need to have some idea of the probabilities involved, and they are seldom available. For example, I've never considered trying to apply any of these methods to investment decisions, where, as you say, the main factors are emotional/psychological issues, particularly mob psychology.

To: E. Charters who wrote (13041)	6/10/2006 1:52:01 AM
From: Gib Bogle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78419

He was a smart fellah, or as my dad would have said, a fart smellah. Believe it or not, I had dinner with the great man once (at a mutual friend's place in Altadena, CA). As I recall, my opinion of him was rather higher than his of me. I was then working in the Environmental Quality Lab at Caltech, a multidisciplinary group working at the science-policy interface on California environmental issues. As far as Feynman was concerned this wasn't real science and didn't belong at Caltech. He may well have been right. We had a slight difference of opinion, but not on that. The conversation came around to the differences between chimps and human beings, so close genetically. He was arguing that it was all down to the difference in ability to communicate, I couldn't accept that. (Sorry for sounding so name-droppy) He was a kind of God at Caltech. Apart from being one of the most creative scientists of the 20th century, he was also an enormously likeable person, great lecturer ... since you've no doubt read some of his books you know what I'm talking about. Of all his fascinating stories, the one that most stuck in my mind was his account of deciding that he wanted to learn to draw (or paint?), and how he used to like to hang around in bars and pick up subjects. I'm not sure that his second wife was completely relaxed about it. The stuff about playing in a band at the Rio Carnival was also wonderful.