Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Office : Not Mutually Independent


Here is a movie of your new office building. The building is made of office cubicles and glass. It faces a river on one side and a red road on another. There are nine offices in the building that are available for use. The most desirable offices have windows that face the river or face the road. Of course, two windows are better than one, and a top floor office with two windows is the prize selection. But unfortunately, you cannot choose. You are assigned randomly to one of the offices and all are equally likely to be your assigned office.

Although in this building, river views, road views, and top floor offices are pair-wise independent they are not mutually independent, since they are not also three-way independent. Can you determine how?

A Colorful Normal Distribution


I ran across this normal distribution on Flickr. It is outside the Rodin Museum in Paris. A close-up can also be seen here. Of course sometimes people get carried away. Here for example or here. And yet another here. See even more by searching "Rodin stickers" on Flickr.