[Self] I found 13 four-leaf clovers today. How many more would I need to find to equate winning the lottery?

https://redd.it/1svko73
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[Request] how much pressure did Superboy generate and what is a good comparison?

https://redd.it/1svftfp
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[Request] What would happen to the ISS if it was this close to earth?
https://redd.it/1svp5xp
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[Request] Can this be proven?
https://redd.it/1svqh2b
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[Request] How much weight is she holding in each hand?

https://redd.it/1svrvlq
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Japan has a surname extinction crisis by the year 2531 all Japanese will have a common surname (Sato) as the most common name today is held by 1.5% of the population request

I came across this interesting article and wondered how they were able to pinpoint the specific year 2531 and how would they even be able to calculate something like this??

Full text:

Every person in Japan will end up with the same last name.

Unless the country changes it’s traditional marriage laws.

Japan faces a "surname extinction" crisis as a mandatory marriage law could make "Sato" the country's only legal name within five centuries.

A striking new simulation by Professor Hiroshi Yoshida of Tohoku University reveals a future where Japan’s rich tapestry of family names vanishes entirely. If the nation’s current legal requirement for married couples to share a single surname remains unchanged, every citizen could be named "Sato" by the year 2531. As the most common name today, held by roughly 1.5% of the population, Sato’s prevalence is growing annually. Experts warn that without legislative intervention, the diversity of Japanese identities will continue to erode, with projections suggesting half the population will share the name by 2446.

The root of this demographic shift lies in a 19th-century legal framework that mandates spouses choose one surname, a tradition that results in approximately 95% of women adopting their husband's name. Critics argue this system not only threatens individual identity but also compromises centuries of family history and cultural heritage. Professor Yoshida’s study serves as a high-stakes call for the adoption of selective separate surnames, a policy change that would allow couples to retain their original names. By highlighting this potential "Sato-fication" of Japan, researchers hope to spark a vital national conversation about balancing legal traditions with the preservation of genealogical diversity.

source: McCurry, J. (2024). Japan could have a single surname by 2531 unless marriage law changes, study says. The Guardian.

https://redd.it/1svsewa
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[Request] How long could a person stay conscious in an enclosed 2m zorb ball?
https://redd.it/1svxkgj
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[request] What is the accuracy of this?
https://redd.it/1svzeqj
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[Request] How much cubic feet of land would fill in this area? Also what would it cost?
https://redd.it/1svxnz8
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[request] This feels untrue
https://redd.it/1sw0h82
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[Request] anybody able to validate this? What is the actual amount of energy a query from chatgpt costs vs Google from 2008?
https://redd.it/1sw2f17
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[Request] Are these numbers accurate?
https://redd.it/1sw6wpm
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[REQUEST] Is the maths correct here? Surely he hasn't spent over $100m on Golf
https://redd.it/1sw8886
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[Request] How many pizzas have Domino's made?
https://redd.it/1sw2mo2
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[Request] this is a frog during a rocket launch, based off the force of the launch, frog terminal velocity,and frog to ground impact force, did our froggy friend (mathematically) survive.
https://redd.it/1svxgsr
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[Request] how low was the velocity of the bullet/how hard is the snow to stop the bullet?

https://redd.it/1swf5ob
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[Request] How much stink is required to do that?
https://redd.it/1swhbva
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Self Off-site Veritasium's simulation of luck pissed me off. So I ran it myself

This is in reference to this video: being delusion is a super power. Its a good video overall, but there is a simulation inside it that is completely wrong.

It was a simulation about luck. He took 18000 thousand candidates, gave them random skill scores from 0-100. Random luck scores from 0-100. Added them in the 95:5 ratio and tried to reverse engineer how important a 5 percent luck factor is. Basically: skill is 0-95, luck from 0-5, total score 0-100. Some of his results:

The top 10 candidates had an average luck of 95%
9 out of the top 10 candidates would not have been selected had luck not been present.

It just didn't make ANY SENSE to me.

Here is a POV of his selection: There are no skill differences in his model of the world!!!

|Rank|Skill|luck|
|:-|:-|:-|
||||
|1|99.9|???|
|2|99.9|???|
|3|99.9|???|
|4|99.9|???|
|5|99.9|???|
|...|...|...|
|20|99.9|???|
|...|...|...|
|40|99.8|???|
|...|...|...|

And I figure out why:

1. he considered skill to be a uniform distribution
2. if you are selecting the top 0.2% (in this case, almost equal to the total score of of 99.8), but your max skill score contribution is 95, then OBVIOUSLY you need a luck of at least 4.8 / 5??? This is clearly a flaw with the simulation, it doesn't model anything at all!

So I fixed it: I modelled skill to be a sort of log normal distribution (almost a bell curve). I calibrated this curve based on deadlift data. (it was the best quantifiable metric of skill I landed on). And I added a performance variance due to luck.

I now simulated a deadlift competition among 18000 applicants. And took that stats of the winner and the top 10. Note that the simulation still isn't perfect

1. using deadlift weight as a proxy for "skill" still isn't perfect since real skill isn't linear. Someone could lift only 20kg more but in the grand scheme of things, that's a huge skill gap
2. I was VERY generous with luck. I assumed a 7.5% standard deviation in performance

I posted my findings on my own youtube channel (LINK TO VIDEO). But I know a lot of you guys don't have time for all that, so I am posting it here as well:

|Rank|Deadlift Skill (kg)|Win percentage|average winning luck|avg luck “needed” to beat #2|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
||||||
|1|510|58.6 %|65|35|
|2|490|31.4 %|83|63|
|3|456|5.1 %|95|92|
|4|444|2.1 %|99|99|
|5|438|0.9 %|99|99|
|6|438|0.9 %|99|99|
|7|428|0.3 %|100|100|
|8|427|0|N/A|N/A|
|9|427|0.2 %|100|100|
|10|423|0.2 %|100|100|
|10 to 18000|<423|0.3 %|100|100|

Its now much more realistic. 70 percent of the top 10 candidates deserve to be there, and the very top candidates are never left out. The above table tracks stats for winning the whole competition (being the #1), and I noticed that average luck isn't even a very good metric. A better metric is "needed" luck to beat the #2. Also, I only considered 1000 iterations, so there is a lot of noise in the data, but I decided to leave that in, since real life doesn't give you a million iterations

I hope you guys found this interesting!

https://redd.it/1swj254
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If someone made an indestructible baseball, how hard would a batter have to hit the ball in order for it to turn into a meteor in space? [request]
https://redd.it/1swocts
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