[FRIAM] Entropy RE-redux

[Nicholas Thompson]

Marcus,

Thanks for checking in.  I think I can safely say that that is a thing I
will probably never do, but you have reminded me that I ought to see if
somebody has already done it in NetLogo.

I am sorry that my original post was garbled.  Here is an ungarbled version:

*Same setup as before. Cylinder with two plungers and a peggable slider at
dead center.  Lets fill our compartments with bbs of the same volume. Unpeg
the divider.  Now let's tap on the two opposite plungers with a series of
blows of the same average magnitude but differen*t skew* in the
distribution of magnitudes: a normal distribution for the left half, and a
highly positive skewed distribution on the right.   Will the divider
move?  *
As I think about it, I begin to wonder what is the best measure of central
tendency to use in making a prediction.  Am I correct that if it is the
arithmatic mean, the barrier does not move, and if it is the root mean
square, it does?  How on earth would I decide which measure to move;  I
suppose we could look and see what happens to the bbs.

Nick

On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 1:25 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

> Can you make this more fun and ask George or your favorite virtual
> correspondent for a Python or Mathematica implementation?  Then we’d have
> something definite to debug.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Nicholas Thompson
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 15, 2025 8:27 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Entropy RE-redux
>
>
>
> Same setup as before. Cylinder with two plungers and a peggable slider at
> dead center.  Lets fill our compartments with bbs of the same volume. Unpeg
> the divider.  Now lets tap on the two opposite plungers with a series of
> blows of the same average magnitude but different but different positive
> skew in the distribution of magnitudes. Will the divider move?
>
> --
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>
> Clark University
>
> nthompson at clarku.edu
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. /
> ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>


-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250615/9f5b36b6/attachment.html>