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Re: [Phys-L] Faraday paradox +- pedagogy +- critical thinking



That there exists at least two (and in fact thousands of) people with the
same number of hairs on their heads is a classic result of the pigeon-hole
principle: 7 billion people have from zero to maybe 200,000 hairs. That
there is another person with the same number of hairs as you (or any other
initially specified person) is likely but not certain.

Not really related, but this one always reminds me of the birthday paradox,
that it takes only 23 people randomly selected to have greater than 50%
chance that two or more will share a common birthday.

It is possible (not certain) that I associate those two questions from
having first seen them in the Scientific American book of mathematical
puzzles and diversions.




On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 5:57 PM, Bernard Cleyet <bernard@cleyet.org> wrote:


On 2014, May 31, , at 16:19, John Denker <jsd@av8n.com> wrote:


Suggestion: Start with Fermi problems that do not
require very much physics domain knowledge, e.g.
-- how many hairs on your head?


How many people on earth have the same number of hairs (scalp) you have?


Is it provable that there is at least one, or just extremely probable?

bc, how many? easy as he has so few.
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