Suppose there is an epidemic in which every month half of those who are well become sick, and a quarter of those who are sick become dead. Find the steady state for the corresponding Markov process
Obviously since people keep dying every month as Time approaches Infinity the population of people approaches zero until everyone dies. Unfortunately this took me 40 minutes to prove mathematically. How uplifting-of the millions of choices of word problems someone could make up why did they choose this?
14 comments:
because they can, that's why.
Ummm ... wow! Sorry, I just ship things and play a little math mania on the Webkinz site. I think that's more my league and they think I'm brilliant! You're way over my head.
Don't feel bad, when she was working on it my only contribution was, "Everyone will end up dead".
Just LOOKING at that made my head hurt. I've been feeling a little low about my choice of an English degree lately and that math boosted me right back up. My head was just not made for that stuff...
And I'm with Aunt C--everyone IS going to end up dead.
(And I agree that's an incredibly depressing problem, and I have no idea why they'd choose that one instead of something a bit more cheerful.)
Sounds like a good survivor show. Or would that be a non survivor show?
...I make double cheeseburgers for a living...
Oh, Michael. Scott and I just got a really good laugh out of that.
That's a lie, Michael. You tell people to make double cheeseburgers for a living.
Actually, that's not really even that true anymore.
I now calculate how many double cheeseburgers we're behind every month, and have to figure out ways to make that up, in profit.
Everybody is eating the profits.
Thanks for telling me this was a math problem.....
I thought you were swearing at me in computer speak....
1) Hahaha... uncle Marv.
2) After reading that... you're probably in the running to be one of my heroes.
3) Don't sweat it, Mickey. I stock a convenience 2/3 of the time and make coffee drinks for the rest of it. I'm turning out to be a professional scrounger. Look at Jordan if you need any more proof.
Ha ha. Funny story about eating profits.
I realized I've probably eaten like, half a case of apples throughout the month that I still haven't rung up through the registers.
And I have to do inventory today.
Is it better to have Uncle Marv as a hero or Axle Rose?
Tough call.
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