How many bitcoins do you hold?

[R-]

I have 21 million.


Not 

[Dutch Merganser]

Mathematically illiterate poll
what does 500< means? 500 is less than....what?

Sit down! F

There are a lot of foreign language speakers here, if you really have that much trouble figuring out what he means you should probably just give up now.

+1

FWIW, my reference position is to be short in the same amount as I am holding, hedged and more or less flat with respect to price changes. I'm just a teensy bit on the short side now, leaving me with plenty of dry powder in margin at Bitcoinica.

[Piper67]

Reminds me of president Eisenhower, who flew into a rage when his advisors told him that roughly half of the US population was of below average intelligence :-) Guess which half he was on?

[Dutch Merganser]

Reminds me of president Eisenhower, who flew into a rage when his advisors told him that roughly half of the US population was of below average intelligence :-) Guess which half he was on?

That's pretty funny, I'd never heard that before

Say what you will about Eisenhower, at least he wasn't an effete and decadent little pussy like just about every Republican who treats us to his/her mouth farting noises these days. McCain gets a pass in my book but the spine he had 40 years ago turned to jelly somewhere along the way.

I don't think there is anyone who regards Eisenhower's parting comments on the "Military-Industrial Complex" as anything other than precise and prescient. It certainly helps explain the mindset of worthless and evil fucks like the Project For A New American Century, the mindset that says all we have to do is to regularly kick some ass to have our way. Recall, these are the exact individuals who brought us war on phony pretenses in Iraq, and anyone who tells me we wouldn't have been better off cutting their throats from ear to ear can't do simple math.

Section IV below for the exact quote:
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

[Dan The Man]

over 99% of humans have an above average number of legs

[notme]

over 99% of humans have an above average number of legs

False

[Dan The Man]

over 99% of humans have an above average number of legs

False

ORLY? Take a ballpark guess of what the average number of legs per person is for the entire population of Earth? If you add up all of the legs that everyone has and divide it by the total number of people, what do you think that number might be?

Now what do you think the one percentile is for number of legs? What is the cut off for being in the lowest 1% of the population in regards to number of legs? If you arranged the world population in a line based on how many legs they had, from most to least, how many legs would the guy who is 99% of the way down the line have?

Is the one percentile higher or lower than the average?

[notme]

over 99% of humans have an above average number of legs

False

ORLY? Take a ballpark guess of what the average number of legs per person is for the entire population of Earth? If you add up all of the legs that everyone has and divide it by the total number of people, what do you think that number might be?

Now what do you think the one percentile is for number of legs? What is the cut off for being in the lowest 1% of the population in regards to number of legs? If you arranged the world population in a line based on how many legs they had, from most to least, how many legs would the guy who is 99% of the way down the line have?

Is the one percentile higher or lower than the average?

Average number of legs per person... ballpark 1.99998 (some have more, some have less, but probably more with missing/partial legs than people with extra legs)

I would say that having both legs off at the hip would put you in the 1%.

Legless Joe has less legs than the average.

Now let's look at your statement:

over 99% of humans have an above average number of legs

You're saying everyone before Joe has more than 1.99998 legs, which is not true because there are people with 1 leg, people with 1.5 legs (off at the knee), etc.

Also, I gave you the benefit of the doubt by assuming there are more legless/partial legs than extra legs.  Without that, your statement is just patently false.

[notme]

And yes, I'm claiming 1% of the population has at least a little of their leg cut off.  1% being legless is probably a stretch, but I know a lot of people who have lost at least a toe.

[Dan The Man]

And yes, I'm claiming 1% of the population has at least a little of their leg cut off.  1% being legless is probably a stretch, but I know a lot of people who have lost at least a toe.

Here is some data for Eritrea, a country known for having a lot of legs blown off by landmines: http://folk.uib.no/mfakh/LM/amputees.html
Percentage of population with leg amputation: 0.045%. Feel free to double that figure if you think toe amputations count as missing legs. Double it again if you think Eritrea is an optimistic representation of the world. It still doesn't make 1%.

So unless the rest of the world is doing way worse than Eritrea, or there is a vast population of secret tripods, then it is completely correct to say that 99% of the people in the world have above average number of legs. The point was that mean values can be misleading for certain cases.

[notme]

The point was that mean values can be misleading for certain cases.

That we can agree on... simple examples are usually better than complex ones though.