

One shot, once a minute catches a Tit. - chanux
http://ildekon.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-08-05T05:41:00-07:00&max-results=1

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Gormo
Interesting photo, bad statistical analysis.

The probability of a bird flying in front of the camera exactly as it takes a
photo is in no way dependent on how long the camera has been running. Every
image capture is an independent event.

There are also many, many webcams in existence, and while there is a low
probability of a bird appearing in a photo captured by any specific camera,
the probability of _some_ bird appearing in front of _some_ camera at _some_
time would be much higher, and would likely have resulted in a similar amount
of attention from bloggers.

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kgermino
Every image is an independent event so the likelihood of a bird appearing in a
specific image is unrelated to how long the camera is up. However the
likelihood of the bird appearing in any of the images the camera has taken
depends on the total number of images. So the analysis is sound.

However I do agree with the second half of you post, the probability of some
bird clearly appearing in some shot from some webcam somewhere in the world is
very likely near 1.

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gardarh
The probability of an event occuring once you know it occured is,
surprisingly, "very likely near 1".

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Gormo
Sure, if you're looking at the probability of that specific event occurring.

But if you want to generalize about kinds of events, rather than a single
specific one, it's useful to use past events as sample data to estimate
probabilities of similar events occurring in the future (provided, of course,
that you have defined meaningful categories for entities and events.)

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ibejoeb
I'll admit I had no idea what I was getting into when I clicked...

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kenjackson
I had a very clear idea... I left extremely disappointed.

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electromagnetic
I was expecting an office webcam and a clothing malfunction, not a titmouse
from a webcam I have no clue where it's mounted.

I mean is this out of someones apartment window, is the next screen a bird-
splat? Or is this a traffic cam, but if it is why on this puny double-way-road
and not a 3-lane highway or on-ramp cam? If this is on a street light, why is
it easily 2-stories higher than all the streetlights in the photo.

I'm not so much interested in the bird, but where the heck is this camera
mounted?

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techbio
It isn't one in 2.4 million frames--it's the one that got found out of all N
webcams running since the beginning of time.

Glad the title wasn't replaced with '* * *'. Nice tit. Thanks for finding
this, hackers.

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JangoSteve
It's definitely a cool shot, but I'm not sure what the point is in trying to
calculate the probability of it happening after the fact.

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joezydeco
Good point. If the bird builds a nest in front of the camera, that blows your
expected value out of the water.

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joezydeco
Unless that bird can hover, I'd hate to think what the next frame looked like.

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JangoSteve
Probably a smear, since the next frame would have been 60 seconds later.

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rrhyne
Somewhat misleading title.

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jules
The only reason you calculated the probability is because you observed such an
event. Person throws 10 dice and observes 4123532156. "Wow, what are the odds
of that?!"

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ck2
Are there many webcams that do 1280x800 resolution? Or is it more likely a
photo?

<http://plastik.hu/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/cinke.jpg>

Occasionally an ant or fly will crawl across my security webcam and scare the
heck out of me for a moment.

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zacwhite
I'd say the probability is however many birds have been caught on a webcam in
however many webcam pictures have been taken. Roughly.

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motters
Destined to become a meme.

