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On 2015-11-22 04:44, spike wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">It
occurred to me that without some kind of indication of a
range of possible amounts in the vault, this is any ordinary
trivial guessing game. But if we assume the amount of money
in the vault is somewhere between 0 and 6,283,185 dollars
with each amount being equally probable, the problem becomes
a calculation.</span></p>
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<br>
I actually liked the undefined nature of the amount. Thinking about
things that could have any order of magnitude brings up really cool
issues of noninformative priors.<br>
<br>
The thing reminds me of the problem of doing a Bayesian analysis of
the German tank problem when you have only one tank (it came up
during I lecture I gave last week). <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem</a><br>
Using a noninformative prior there will not work for one tank. If
you have a known upper limit Omega on how many tanks there could be,
then you can assume the actual number is uniform between 1 and Omega
and do a calculation, ending up with an estimate.<br>
<br>
In your lovely problem having an upper limit Omega makes things
easier but less interesting. <br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
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