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Oct 11, 2014 at 13:34 comment added Asaf Karagila @Foon: Not really. Your job is to abuse mathematics and take a 40% safety factor. Mathematicians are the ones whose job description requires them to be super nitpicky and ignore the actual question.
Oct 11, 2014 at 13:20 comment added Foon @AsafKaragila I is an engineer; pretty sure ignoring the actual question and nitpicking the small mistakes is right there in my job description
Oct 11, 2014 at 11:23 comment added Asaf Karagila @bof: Or because that wasn't the point of the question, and in a surprising case mathematicians were able to transcend the mistake and talk about the actual question, rather than ignoring the actual question and nitpick the small mistakes? :-)
Oct 11, 2014 at 11:13 history edited bof CC BY-SA 3.0
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Oct 11, 2014 at 11:11 comment added bof You are quite right, the OP botched the definition of the St. Petersburg Paradox. I also pointed this out in my comment on the question. I assume the "other people" didn't bother to read the OP's description of the game, because they are already familiar with it and assume OP described it correctly.
Oct 11, 2014 at 1:09 comment added Edward Jiang I'm sorry, but I'm not asking about the game. I just gave it as an example of something that's counter-intuitive.
Oct 10, 2014 at 21:42 history answered Foon CC BY-SA 3.0