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Schroedinger redux

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Nick Thompson

Schroedinger redux

Dear Friammers,

If anyone is curious about where I ended up on Schroedinger's glass of water, it's pasted in below.

I don't necessarily recommend it.

Thanks for your collective patience.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]

As penance for my blunder last week re Schroedinger, please consider the following.

Imagine a perfectly rectangular and homogenous State, call it North Blandia, which is composed of ten counties, each of which contains ten thousand people. Thus there are a thousand times as many people in each county as there are counties in the State. Now imagine that there is a great depression in North Blandia and all the people scatter all over the State looking for work, such that the people of my County, Blather County, (as it happens, whose county seat is, Blatherville, by the way) are randomly distributed amongst all the ten counties of the State. I am one of those people, and I end up finding a job at the opposite end of the State (in Verbose County, as it happens, whose county seat is Verbose City). I am homesick and lonely. I decide to form a Verbose Blather County Club made up of other émigrés from Blather County who are living in Verbose County. How many potential members can I expect to find in my new County.

The chance of any former resident of Blather County ending up in any one of the counties, including my present one, is one in ten. And there were ten thousand people who could have done so. So I can hope to have at least a thousand members in my new club.

In general, the expectation is just the ratio between the number of elements in the smaller entity county, glass of water, whatever and the number of smaller entities in the larger, in this case, ten thousand to ten, in Schroedingers case 8x10^24/8x10^21.

As Schroedingers text makes evident, the reason for my intuitive failure is my inability to grasp both the fact and the implications of the fact that there are many more molecules in a glass of water than glasses of water in the ocean.

The only puzzle left is why Schroedinger came up with a hundred molecules, whereas I (and others of you) came up with a thousand. I can only assume that he used a smaller glass (or a bigger ocean).

Thank you for your patience,

Nick

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Sarbajit Roy (testing)

Re: Schroedinger redux

Dear Nicholas

The foundation of your construct is that North Blandia consists of 10 counties with 10,000 people in each. The problem is what happens to the people in the other 9 counties - where do they go looking for work if there is no work in Blather county - how do you maintain your 10,000/county limit when you have this influx of homesick economic refugees ?

Sarbajit

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear Friammers,

If anyone is curious about where I ended up on Schroedinger's glass of water, it's pasted in below.

I don't necessarily recommend it.

Thanks for your collective patience.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]

As penance for my blunder last week re Schroedinger, please consider the following.

Imagine a perfectly rectangular and homogenous State, call it North Blandia, which is composed of ten counties, each of which contains ten thousand people. Thus there are a thousand times as many people in each county as there are counties in the State. Now imagine that there is a great depression in North Blandia and all the people scatter all over the State looking for work, such that the people of my County, Blather County, (as it happens, whose county seat is, Blatherville, by the way) are randomly distributed amongst all the ten counties of the State. I am one of those people, and I end up finding a job at the opposite end of the State (in Verbose County, as it happens, whose county seat is Verbose City). I am homesick and lonely. I decide to form a Verbose Blather County Club made up of other émigrés from Blather County who are living in Verbose County. How many potential members can I expect to find in my new County.

The chance of any former resident of Blather County ending up in any one of the counties, including my present one, is one in ten. And there were ten thousand people who could have done so. So I can hope to have at least a thousand members in my new club.

In general, the expectation is just the ratio between the number of elements in the smaller entity … county, glass of water, whatever … and the number of smaller entities in the larger, in this case, ten thousand to ten, in Schroedinger’s case 8x10^24/8x10^21.

As Schroedinger’s text makes evident, the reason for my intuitive failure is my inability to grasp both the fact and the implications of the fact that there are many more molecules in a glass of water than glasses of water in the ocean.

The only puzzle left is why Schroedinger came up with a hundred molecules, whereas I (and others of you) came up with a thousand. I can only assume that he used a smaller glass (or a bigger ocean).

Thank you for your patience,

Nick

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org