Yes I think fractions cause people as many problems as these other "more advanced" ideas. I've seen students in calc 2 who still had messy ideas about fractions. It's not trivial and just because we teach some of it to 5th graders doesn't mean everyone knows how they work.
@futurebird I was in a "math/physics/informatics" profiled class, and our math teacher was an absolute legend. Friends who went on to study math easily coasted on what they learned in high school for a year or two.
That said, conditional probability remains Black Magic to me.
Part of the reason conditional probability and probability more generally are confusing is that it insists on living on the margin of human language expressed in words and sentences and mathematical representations of that language.
And our language simply IS NOT precise when talking about cause, effect, probability, dependence and a whole host of topics. It's a big mess.
It hardly matters. I'm violating one of my own rules: never attempt to teach math online, knowing as sure as night follows day, someone will ask your sort of question - about an ace-less deck.
@tuban_muzuru@rysiek@futurebird I'm not trying to annoy you! Just pointing out that probability calculations don't work if you're missing crucial info: in this case, that the dealer is crooked. He's only shuffling 49 cards - retaining three of the aces to bottom deal as needed. 🤷♂️
But even math is tricky! Assuming a *fair* riffle shuffle and any number of *fair* cuts, what's the probability of dealing four cards, one of each suit, first attempt?
@tuban_muzuru@rysiek@futurebird Okay help me out here. You somehow do your experiment 100,000 times: deal cards face-up from a face-down shuffled deck, stopping when you get to an ace. You then calculate the probability of the next card also being an ace.
But the next card is never an ace. All 100,000 iterations of the game, it's an indifferent card. You then learn you could have done it an *infinite* number of times, and still have never seen a second ace. The actual probability is 0.
@tuban_muzuru@rysiek@futurebird Depends on prior knowledge of the deck, because all shuffles (other than a tabled casino wash, but even that can be manipulated to some extent) are non-random.
Believe it or not, it takes around 2,500 standard overhand shuffles to fully randomize a prearranged deck! A sloppy riffle shuffle is more efficient, achieving this in only seven shuffles - but a perfect, card-for-card interweaving of the packets will restore the deck to original order in eight shuffles.