Is Math Hard?

[TommyWillB]

If Mac users are 5-10% of the computer users, and gay folks are 5-10% of the population, what percentage of gay folks are Mac users?

 

[kendall]

What percentage of the population are computer users?

 

[TommyWillB]

I wanted to qualify that by say "what % of gay computer users..." but the subject line had a length limitation...

 

[kendall]

Well, wouldn't gay folks be 5-10% of any population?

 

[mystique]

Tommy, Tommy, Tommy..."Is Math Hard? "...this is not the REAL issue at hand is it?

C'mon..if you can't talk to the bartender, WHO can you talk to?

Week old donuts are HARD..dealing with my mum after three glasses of Port is HARD...Trying to watch "What Lies Beneath" without tossing your cookies is HARD...but is:
MATH HARD?

come by Herve's and we'll chat.

 

[ksv]

Originally posted by TommyWillB
If Mac users are 5-10% of the computer users, and gay folks are 5-10% of the population, what percentage of gay folks are Mac users?

If I had 100 apples, and someone took some of them, how many apples would I have left?

 

[boi]

two independent variables. you can get a statistical analysis based on confidence intervals, but all you would get is a probability of a percentage, which is pretty flaky at best.

 

[scruffy]

Ah, but are they independent? For example, at least according to stereotypes, both using a Mac and being gay have a positive corellation with being artistic.

So, assuming both those (somewhat popularly held) impressions to be true, if say 8% of the population uses macs, 8% of the population is gay, and 8% of the population is artistic, but 25% of the artistic population uses macs, and 16% of the gay population is artistic, then being gay could increase your chance of using a mac by some amount that I'm not up to figuring out on my day off.

edit - so in response to the subject line's question: Yes, math is hard, at least when a friend brought a bottle of raki to your wife's birthday party last night, and there was a good deal of eggnog with rum before the raki even got opened.

Speaking of which, I would like a dark rum with coffee, or with eggnog if it's homemade.

 

[mystique]

And Tommy dear....

Is it REALLY that important for you to know because from what I've seen here...you've going to have to climb higher ladder's than this one to get a realanswer, luv.

 

[TommyWillB]

Originally posted by mystique
And Tommy dear....

Is it REALLY that important for you to know...

Sometimes it has little to do with “knowing” and more to do with the journey to find knowledge.

But truthfully... I was mostly interested in seeing what types of responses this non-sequitur question would illicit. The great part is that the responses were very true to form. :->

 

[chemistry_geek]

All things being equal, i.e., no correlations between gays being exceptionally artisitic and preferring macs, you would multiply one percentage number by another percentage number.

Convert from % to decimal:
(5% of gay population * 5% Mac market share)/100 = 0.05 * 0.05 = 0.0025

Convert from decimal to percent:

0.0025 * 100 = 0.25% of the gay population use Macs where there are no correlations, dependencies, etc...etc... as previous members posted.

This is an overly simplistic model because it doesn't take into account personality preferences which DO exist in that population, but it serves the purpose of showing how to take a percent of a percent.

'nough said. The Geek.

P.S. Math should not be difficult. If it is, other language-specific difficulties/problems [for the afflicted individual] could exist. See a physician for details.

 

[Ricky]

Chem. Geek: You have to add the factor of how many people actually use computers out of the total population of the world.

 

[ksv]

Nope. If we follow these numbers and don't count correlations, dependencies etc, 5-10 percent of gay people are Mac users, while 0.25% of the population are both gay and uses Mac if 5% of the population are gay, and 5% are Mac users