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From: crs@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.sci
Subject: Re: The missing step -- self-reproducing organisms
Message-ID: <16563@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 21-Nov-84 09:23:42 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.16563
Posted: Wed Nov 21 09:23:42 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Nov-84 03:05:42 EST
References: gatech.10770 <3469@ecsvax.UUCP> <10810@gatech.UUCP> <1262@hao.UUCP>
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Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
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> If an event has a probability of occuring that is greater than zero, and there
> are an infinite number of attempts at it, then the probability that it will
> eventually occur is indeed 1, no matter how small the probability that it will
> happen on a given attempt.

I'm not sure I'm convinced of this.  As I recall from the little probability
that I've had, *if* an event has a probability associated with it, that
probability is unaffected by the number of attempts that have occurred.  The
rather mundane example of the coin toss comes to mind.  With a fair coin the
the probability of tossing heads is 0.5 *with each toss* so that if I have
tossed the coin n - 1 times, the probability of tossing heads on the n-th
toss is *still* 0.5.  It seems to me that this applies to the discussion about
the probability of life forming.

Perhaps there is a probability expert out there who can elaborate.

Charlie Sorsby
...!lanl-a!crs
crs@lanl

Cc: crs@lanl