Nice People 12: Nice in Nice

neverdespairgirl

Generali wrote: »

Doctor/parents I have known have tended towards the neurotic. I put it down to the fact that they know what can go wrong. Combine that with the human inability to judge risk and you have a combination that will tend towards being over protective.

I remember watching a programme a while ago about risk and our perception of it. Essentially, we overestimate some risks and are unduly optimistic about risks accumulating from things we do ourselves, could change, and don't want to change. Is that about right?

zagubov wrote: »

There used be a saying that the cobbler's children were the worst-shod. Reading back that doesn't exactly sound ultra-modern but it's probably still got some weight.:o

As regards height, there was a radio show recently discussing a New Zealand economist captured by the Japanese. He noticed the deaths in the camp followed a height graph and because he was one of the shortest in the camp he thought he had a good chance of making it, and make it he did.

Because taller people need more calories, on average? Is that the reason, do you think?

Perhaps my beloved sons will therefore spend their adulthoods in and out of prison. I'm not quite sure what the equivalent of badly-shod cobblers' children is, for lawyers.

Generali

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I remember watching a programme a while ago about risk and our perception of it. Essentially, we overestimate some risks and are unduly optimistic about risks accumulating from things we do ourselves, could change, and don't want to change. Is that about right?

That's about it really. Generally we overestimate the chance of good things happening and underestimate the chance of bad things happening. We also underestimate the chance of something going wrong while doing something familiar.

I think that's why more people are afraid of flying than driving: we are used to driving whereas flying is unusual for most of us.

GDB2222

zagubov wrote: »

There's loads of genes for height and in humans tallness tends to be recessive, so it's common for tallness to skip generations and for people to be taller than their parents.

Just been to see Monty Python at the cinema. Quite an experience! Some of them are getting a bit forgetful though.

If you combine two concepts, it explains why heights are normally distributed.

First genes that perhaps have only two states, tall and short, so perhaps each one produces something as extreme as a two state distribution of heights, ie as far from a normal distribution as you can get.

Second a very large number of independent genes contributing to height, together with the central limit theorem. That states that if you add together a large number of random variables, the result is normally distributed, even if the individual variables are not.

That theorem really explains why the normal distribution keeps coming up in nature.

But not everything, for example the number of eyes and ears people have is definitely not normally distributed.

GDB2222

CKhalvashi wrote: »

Is that supposed to be Rossiya, or MH?

The liveries are similar.....

I am not aware of any Russian aircraft being shot down recently.

PasturesNew

I knew house prices would fall once I bought one; one of today's newspaper reports on the news is that house prices have fallen. Been stalled by the good weather and the world cup and the threat of higher interest rates apparently.

hjd

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

With 4 children, how many grandchildren did you parents end up with?

My parents had 5 children.
They have ended up with 18 grandchildren. I have 2 children, brother 1 has 14 (plus one who died of cot death), brother 2 has 2, brothers 4 and 5 have no children.
Not the most even distribution!

PasturesNew

My parents had 3 children. 0 grandchildren.

CKhalvashi

PasturesNew wrote: »

I knew house prices would fall once I bought one; one of today's newspaper reports on the news is that house prices have fallen. Been stalled by the good weather and the world cup and the threat of higher interest rates apparently.

Possibly something short-term from the new lending rules, too.

CKhalvashi

GDB2222 wrote: »

I am not aware of any Russian aircraft being shot down recently.

Thinking about that now, it was a bit of a stupid question to ask.

Word has it (here, anyway, I don't know about in UK) that the actual target was a Rossiya plane, that's the only reason I asked.

silvercar

hjd wrote: »

My parents had 5 children.
They have ended up with 18 grandchildren. I have 2 children, brother 1 has 14 (plus one who died of cot death), brother 2 has 2, brothers 4 and 5 have no children.
Not the most even distribution!

Has brother 1 been on one of the recent TV programmes? How does he transport his brood?