Tom Storer

Deepest sympathies, Jim. It sounds like you loved each other and he knew it--a good way to part. Hang in there.

I particularly like his duo with Dave McKenna, playing music from "My Fair Lady," and another duo with Roger Kellaway.

Terry is game, good for him. But Shorter... wow!

R.I.P. to a real original.

I'm 50 and, listening without headphones, I can hear them up to the "39 and younger" category (15 kHz). The higher frequencies I don't hear. Even the 14 and 15 kHz I only hear when I turn it up loud. But it's true that I have damaged my hearing--not from rock concerts but from decades of portable audio devices. I had to give up my iPod last year. No more headphones for me.

So, Jim, tell me--what language does time speak in the men's room?

Now she's the one who's skeptical about time speaking English in the men's facilities, right?

A high school avant-garde ensemble--you gotta love the idea. Who is the guy organizing all this? Ben who?

Thanks, that's an interesting article. Of course, from the jazz fan's point of view--mine, anyway--reverence to the composer's intention seems like only one option and not necessarily the most interesting one. I guess that's one of the real dividing lines between classical music and most other music.

Joyeuse anniversaire! Damn, it's like you have one of these things every year!

Now there's a contestant who should stay, not switch.

Not at all, but I don't think that the fact that some people's hunches seem to come off more than some other people's hunches is a reason to think that existing logical explanations don't cover it. So that's what your question has been from the beginning.

In a case like this Monty Hall game, what, besides the odds, could give you an advantage in choosing when to stay and when to switch? There isn't a way to successfully know, feel or guess when to stay and when to switch, unless you find further information such as a goat fart. If your mother-in-law is perceptive enough to pick up on clues, such as goat farts, Monty's eye movements, tire tracks in the dust leading to a particular door, etc., then yes, she can have better odds. Otherwise, you're talking about the supernatural, in which case why care about the odds at all?

Poor Coltrane! I hope his ACL heals OK. What's an ACL, incidentally?

Yeah, well, Jim, if you already knew it, you wouldn't ask "do you only look at the action going on in this room to figure that out, or do you look at everybody who's played the game in the past?" or say "2/3 vs 1/3 ain't necessarily gonna mean squat when your number comes up." That you make those remarks belies your assertion that you do understand the probability! My take on goat farts is that a goat fart is additional information and changes the odds, just as Monty opening the door on one of the goats changes the odds. Same for hunches--they may be based on conscious or unconscious assimilation of further information, in which case they don't prove anything as concerns further levels of chaos and order as yet unsuspected by man. Hunches not based on assimilation of further information are called "guesses" no matter how strongly we believe in them.

Yes, at some point, not switching is going to result in a win. To be precise about it, it is going to result in a win in every case where someone first picked the door with the car. There is a 1/3 chance of someone first picking the door with the car. That is the likelihood of your having first picked the door with the car, and that is the likelihood of your winning if you decide not to switch--no matter what happened with the other 99 people. Because when you made your first choice, there were three doors. The car was behind one of them. If 99 people play the game before you do, the car is still behind one of three doors when you first choose a door. The likelihood of your choosing the door with the car is not affected by what happened with the other 99 people. You only look at the action going on in this room. It doesn't. It doesn't. (And note that it's not a question of "the chances that your choice will perform according to the odds." That's a confusing way to put it. The chances that your choice will be correct = the odds. The odds are that you are twice as likely to win if you switch. They are based on three possibilities at the outset: you chose the car; you chose goat 1; you chose goat 2. Everything else in this setup flows from those three possibilities and the fact that you don't know where the car was when you made your choice. Nothing about how many other people have won or lost changes that.) Of course it will. It will mean you are twice as likely to win if you switch. It does not mean that you will win. If by "predictor" you mean a way to know with certainty, then no. But the odds aren't about predicting with certainty. They're about predicting probability. Here's what seems to hang you up: you know you're more likely to win if you go with the odds, but you can't ever be certain you will win any single time. You interpret this as "the odds don't mean mean squat." But you're wrong. They allow you to be more likely to win. That's where you're wrong. You do have a "good chance" to win the one time you play, if you switch. That good chance is 67%. That gives you a sense of real, not false, confidence--but still far from certainty. Ah, but you do. Each time the game is played, there are only three doors, only one car. That is the isolation: the circumstances that define the odds are not affected. It's not because someone else has not switched, and won, or because a million people have not switched, and won, that you had more or less than three doors, more or less than one car, more or less than one initial choice. That's what the odds are based on. You're making the same error that unwise gamblers make when they think "I've been losing all night--I'm due for a win! One more game!" It's the flip side of "I'm on a lucky streak! I'll keep playing!" In other words, wishful thinking. The odds are the predictor. They predict that if you switch, you are twice as likely to win. That's as far as it can go. The real purpose of the "small science" of these odds is to give you a strategy that will increase your chances of winning. You still have a 1/3 chance of losing even if you switch, and that's a very big chance. Now in this case, if you don't win a car, big deal, you're no worse off than before. In a situation where losing would cause you real pain or hardship, you'd better be prepared for it because you're not in what I would call a safe position.

Jim, you're asked to make a choice between stay and switch. Each choice can be assigned a probability, as exhaustively demonstrated in this thread: Stay: 1/3 Switch: 2/3 You keep saying "what are the odds that my choice will be right?" and answering that by saying: "they must be 50/50 because there are only two possible outcomes." But it isn't because there are two possible outcomes that the likelihood of each outcome is equal. By saying that there is a 50/50 chance because there are only two outcomes, that is what you are saying: that each outcome is as likely as the other. But that's not true. One outcome is twice as likely as the other. There is no contradiction between saying "I'll either be right or wrong" and saying "I'm twice as likely to be right as to be wrong." In this case, both are true. You'll either get a car or a goat--there is no third possibility. And if you switch, you are twice as likely to get the car. Which doesn't mean you'll get the car, only that you are twice as likely to. You also seem to think there is such a thing as "the odds on the odds." But there isn't. OK, you've chosen to switch and are twice as likely to get the car. This you agree to. But then you've asked, as a further question, what are the odds that you will get the car? That this choice has been right? You're comparing the question "What is the likelihood of the car being behind the door if I switch?" and the question "What is the likelihood that choosing to switch will get the car this time?" Jim, it's the same question. And the same odds.

I think the point is that it's more precise than "could be"--in fact, it's "have a 2-in-3 chance to not like blue." If I understand correctly, it goes like this... Monkeys who prefer red over blue then go on, when given the choice, to prefer green over blue, by about a 2/3 margin. When you look at the odds, there are six possibilities for order of preference: Red, blue, green Red, green, blue Blue, red, green Blue, green, red Green, blue, red Green, red, blue If we take only those where red is preferred to blue, we have: Red, blue, green Red, green, blue Green, red, blue In 2/3 of these cases, green is preferred to blue. So the fact that 2/3 of monkeys who preferred red to blue also preferred green to blue can be explained by simple statistics rather than by choice rationalization. Hence the choice rationalization explanation is less convincing than it would otherwise be. But you knew that. I think the comparison to Monty Hall is just that in both cases you have to think about the odds.

I repeat, they obviously don't want to sell this imprint in bookstores, so they have no need to pay for display space.

Not if they're not selling to bookstores. Apparently the whole point is to sell over the Internet more or less exclusively. Really? In France the sales counted are those at the register.

But was it a book from this "new imprint" or just a HarperCollins book? It makes sense for this new imprint to discourage bookstore orders, if they plan to rely completely on Internet sales. It's the bit about "sharing profits" with writers but not paying advances that I wonder about. I'd be interested to hear the details of that.

If you lose the file--or a CD, for that matter--well, let it go. Be zen about it. Life is short.

I remember him from his time with Mingus--beautiful player! Whether or not his performing career is over, he made an impression.

A download would be fine by me.