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To: ALPAPilot
Could someone ask Al Gore what the sigma certainty of Anthropocentric Global warming is?

You can ask anything you want, I suppose. In hypothesis testing, one must have a clearly stated set of hypotheses, at least two. In the case of matter, antimatter, I believe the two hypotheses are:

Null hypothesis: Matter, as opposed to antimatter, preferentially generated from the interaction of high energy electromagnetic radiation.

Alternate hypothesis: The null hypothesis is false.

One then gathers data, by conducting an experiement, or analyzing historical data, or both, to test the hypothesis and compares the results to the results expected if either hypothesis were true. For instance, if the Null hypothesis is that a given coin is "fair", exhibits heads and tails with equal likelihood, then the experiment would consisted in repeated trials (coin flips) to see if the results are consistent with a fair coin.

If we flipped a hypothetically fair coin ten times and it came up heads five times, we would not have "proven" that the coin is fair, only that our observations were consistent with a fair coin. If if came up heads (or tails) ten straight times, we would not have "proven" that the coin is unfair, only that the observations are highly unlikely (once in 1024 series of trials) given a fair coin.

As the number of coin flips became larger and larger, our certainty about the nature of the coin (see Bayes ninth proposition) would generally increase, though there would always be limits on our confidence. In a run of a thousand trials, a fair coin will produce between 469 and 531 heads 95% of the time. If our results fall in the range, we say with 95% confidence, that the coin is fair.

In global warming, the carnie pulls a coin out of his pocket, won't let anyone examine it, doesn't give you an opportunity to decline to play, tosses the coin and calls out "Heads I win, tails you lose!"

10 posted on 07/07/2011 3:13:55 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (Somewhere in Kenya a village is missing its idiot)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets
In global warming, the carnie pulls a coin out of his pocket, won't let anyone examine it, doesn't give you an opportunity to decline to play, tosses the coin and calls out "Heads I win, tails you lose!"

Nice.

12 posted on 07/07/2011 3:21:43 AM PDT by GOPJ (Black flash mobs: street level reflections of elite liberal hatred for middle class America..)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets
Thanks for the answer concerning the difference in the electron vs the anti-proton. Although they have equal but opposite charges they have a great difference in mass. Correct?

Null hypothesis: Matter, as opposed to antimatter, preferentially generated from the interaction of high energy electromagnetic radiation.

I assume that is defined by E=MC2. That would mean that the proton, though of equal charge to the electron, would contain much more energy, right? Sounds reasonable in that it would take more energy to hold together more mass.

I still don't understand how one manufactures or captures anti-protons for the purposes of experimentation.

As far as your coin flips are concerned, you are talking about the Law of High Numbers which states that the higher the number of tries, the more consistent the probability laws. With high enough tries the deviation from 50/50 becomes insignificant.

19 posted on 07/07/2011 4:27:30 AM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (I retain the right to be inconsistent, contradictory and even flat-out wrong!)
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