text:
Alzey

Alzey is a Verband-free town – one belonging to no Verbandsgemeinde – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the fifth-largest town in Rhenish Hesse, after Mainz, Worms, Ingelheim am Rhein and Bingen.

Alzey is one of the Nibelungenstädte – towns associated with the Nibelungenlied – because it is represented in this work by the character Volker von Alzey. Hence, Alzey is also known as Volkerstadt.

Location
Alzey lies in Rhenish Hesse on the western edge of the northern part of the Upper Rhine Plain. It is surrounded by the northern part of the Alzey Hills, which meets the Rhenish Hesse Hills towards the south and the North Palatine Uplands towards the east. The town is found some 30 km southwest of Mainz and some 22 km (as the crow flies, in each case) northwest of Worms. Through Alzey, in places underground, flows the river Selz, a left-bank tributary to the Rhine.

Climate
Yearly precipitation in Alzey amounts to 586 mm, which is rather low, falling into the lowest fourth of the precipitation chart for all of Germany. At 18% of the German Weather Service's weather stations, even lower figures are recorded. The driest month is February. The most rainfall comes in June. In that month, precipitation is 1.9 times what it is in February. Precipitation varies moderately. At 41% of the weather stations, lower seasonal swings are recorded.

From the Neolithic to the early first millennium

The earliest traces of settlement in the Alzey area go back as far as the Neolithic. Alzey was founded as a vicus (village) in the Roman province of Germania Superior in the lands surrounding Mogontiacum (Mainz).

The name of Alzey is first mentioned on a Nymphenstein (a Roman altar stone dedicated to nymphs), dedicated on 22 November 223 by the Vicani Altiaienses ("Villagers of Alzey"). The name Altiaia could well originate from the name of an older, pre-Roman Celtic settlement of about 400 BC, although the name's exact origins have not been passed down to the present day. Over the ruins of the Roman village, which was destroyed about 350, a fort, Castra Alteium, was built about 390. In 406 and 407, the Burgundians, together with the Vandals, crossed the Rhine and settled in Mainz, Alzey and Worms as Roman confederates. The area was secured for them by treaty. In 436, the Burgundian kingdom was destroyed by the Western Roman magister militum Flavius Aëtius with help from Hunnish troops. These events were worked into the Nibelungenlied and form the origin of the legendary figure Volker von Alzey, the gleeman in the Nibelungenlied. After 450, Alzey passed to the Alamanni and the Franks when they took over the land. After Clovis I's death in 511, the Frankish Empire fell apart into separate smaller kingdoms, and Alzey became part of Austrasia, whose capital was at Metz. Following the unification of the Frankish kingdoms in the mid-8th century, Alzey was assigned by the 843 Treaty of Verdun to the Kingdom of the East Franks, a forerunner of the German Empire. In 897, Alzey was first mentioned as an Imperial fief.

12th century to early 20th century
In 1156, Alzey belonged to the Electorate of the Palatinate, and Konrad von Staufen attained the rank of Count Palatine in the Imperial castle, which had been completed in 1118. In 1277, Alzey attained the rank of town from Rudolf von Habsburg. In 1620, Count Spinola sided with the Catholic Emperor in the Thirty Years' War against the Protestant Electorate of the Palatinate and also conquered Alzey. In 1689, the town and the castle, under the French troops' scorched-earth policy, were burnt down in the Nine Years' War, when Louis XIV's armies had to leave areas conquered earlier. In 1798, areas west of the Rhine, among them those that until this time had been parts of the Electorate of the Palatinate, were annexed to France. Alzey belonged until 1814 to the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). In 1816, Alzey was attached to the Grand Duchy of Hesse. In 1909, the winemaking school (now the Landesanstalt für Rebenzüchtung) was founded. Its first head was Georg Scheu, after whom the grape variety Scheurebe is named.

Third Reich
On Kristallnacht (9 November 1938), the Alzey synagogue was destroyed and the fittings were burnt in front of the building. The ruin was removed in the 1950s. A rescued Torah scroll can nowadays be found in the museum. On 8 January 1945, in World War II, the town narrowly missed being destroyed when 36 Boeing B-17 bombers had been sent to take out a railway bridge in Alzey. Owing to bad weather and a landmark misinterpretation – the crew mistook the top of the old watchtower for the church steeple – the bombers ended up dropping their load on the Wartberg, a nearby hill, giving rise to the legend of the Wartbergturm – the old tower – as Alzey's saviour.

Since 1945
Since 1947, Alzey has no longer been Hessian, but rather it became the seat of Alzey District in the newly formed state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Since the merger of the old Alzey and Worms Districts in 1969, Alzey has been the seat of the new Alzey-Worms District and the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Alzey-Land, although as a Verband-free town, it does not actually belong to the Verbandsgemeinde.

Amalgamations
On 22 April 1972, the formerly autonomous centres of Weinheim, Heimersheim and Dautenheim were amalgamated with Alzey. The outlying centre of Schafhausen had already been a Stadtteil (constituent community) of Alzey since the Middle Ages.

Religion
On 31 January 2008, the townsfolk's religious affiliations broke down thus:
 * 8,927 Evangelical
 * 3,684 Catholic
 * 2,996 none or no affiliation established in public law
 * 1,322 other affiliations established in public law
 * 6,809 other
 * 988 no data
 * sundry
 * 50 Alzey Free Religious-Humanist Association
 * 4 Old Catholic
 * 2 Jewish
 * 1 Mainz Free Religious-Humanist Association

Jewish History
The town's Jewish congregation is dated to the 14th century. In 1349, during the Black Death, the town's Jews were murdered in the cause of a blood libel. A few years after, the community renewed and a document from 1377 depicted a Jew named Yitschak of Alzey who sued the town of Worms for not paying its debt to him. In 1389, a "Jew Alley" is first mentioned, depicting a kind of Ghetto with a gate, which closes at night. Jews appeared once again in town only by the 17th century, and the first synagogue was built only by 1791. Several documents from around 1670, depict disputes between Joseph Simon Jessel, a Jew who lived in Alzey and the town butchers, regarding his wish to open a business. On another dispute between him and a neighbor who sold his house to Jessel but refused to evacuate, the verdict blamed both sides - Jessel for it was "unthinkable that a Jew will hit a Christian", and the neighbor for not evacuating the house. Nevertheless, the Count of Palatine Zweibrücken protected the Jews, whose high taxes were a dominant factor of his income. In 1789, there were 21 Jewish households in town. During the 18th century, most of the town Jews were established if not rich. in 1710, a Jew called Simcha Deidesheimer founded a large Matzo factory that existed until 1925 and exported its products to France and Italy. In addition, two brothers named Levy opened a porcelain factory in town in 1770. The community had a local cemetery Alzey was the hometown of well-known family Belmont; In 1844, Jewish Shimon Belmont (the ancestor of American politicians August Belmont and August Belmont JR. was elected as the president of the 'Narhalle' carnival, which he initiated, intended for the town's high classes. He donated some money to the cemetery and other community facilities. Eight of Alzey Jews died as soldiers during World War I. According to town municipality, 76 Jews were expelled from the town to Nazi concentration camps around Europe. In 1954, one Jew returned to Alzey.

Town council
The council is made up of 32 part-time council members who were elected at the municipal election held on 26 May 2019, and the full-time mayor as chairman. The seats are apportioned thus:

Mayors

 * (1982–1990) Walter Zuber (SPD)
 * (1990–2006) Knut Benkert (SPD)
 * (2006–2022) Christoph Burkhard (independent CDU candidate)
 * (2022–) Steffen Jung (SPD)

Coat of arms
The town's arms might be described thus: Per fess sable a demi-lion rampant Or armed, langued and crowned gules, and argent a vielle bendwise of the third.

The lion recalls the town's former overlord, the Electorate of the Palatinate. The vielle, a kind of fiddle, stands for the noble families by the name of Truchseß, or Truchsess (Volker von Alzey), Winter and Wilch, who were formerly resident in the town.

Town partnerships

 * 🇬🇧 Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom since 1963
 * 🇫🇷 Josselin, Morbihan, France since 1973
 * 🇫🇷 Lembeye, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, with the outlying centre of Weinheim, since 1980
 * 🇦🇹 Rechnitz, Burgenland, Austria since 1981
 * 🇵🇱 Kościan, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland since 1990
 * 🇩🇪 Kamenz, Saxony since 1990

Awards and prizes
The town of Alzey regularly bestows the following awards and prizes:
 * Elisabeth-Langgässer-Literaturpreis (since 1988 every three years)
 * Georg-Scheu-Plakette (yearly at the winemakers' festival)

Music
The town's links with wine are even shown in the Alser Lied, a town song, which is always sung on the Friday of the opening of the winemakers' festival. One version sung by former mayor Walter Zuber could be found on the jukebox at the Alzey traditional pub, Zur Gretel for a decade.

Theatre

 * Gerry-Jansen-Theater

Museums

 * Geschichtsmuseum der Stadt Alzey (Town of Alzey History Museum)

The Old Town
Alzey has a well-kept old town with many timber-frame houses, restaurants, cafés and shops, surrounded by ruins of the mediaeval town wall. The town's midpoint is the Rossmarkt ("Horse Market") with the bronze horse by artist Gernot Rumpf. A sculpture of an ondine by Karlheinz Oswald stands at the Fischmarkt ("Fish Market") in front of the old town hall.

Sport
The Wartbergstadion is the town's biggest sporting facility. It has a type-B competition running track with a large grass playing field, a 400 m loop track, track and field areas (plastic) and stands. Here can also be found the leisure swimming pool Wartbergbad. Nearby there is a riding club with stalls, paddocks and a riding hall, and a tennis club with seven clay courts.

Moreover, Alzey has at its disposal a newly built artificial-turf playing field, which is used mainly by the hockey and football clubs and an American Football club. There is also a multipurpose sporting ground and at schools several more hard courts.

Weinbergshäuschen Wanderung
The so-called Weinbergshäuschen Wanderung ("Vineyard Cottage Hike"), or Wingertshaisje Wanderung in the local speech, is a hike through the hilly Rhenish-Hessian countryside between Alzey and the outlying centres of Weinheim and Heimersheim. It is held each September on the first Sunday in that month. Along the network of paths, vineyard cottages are operated between 11:00 and 18:00 by winemaking estates and clubs. On offer at these times are both cold and warm foods and drinks, including the Rhenish-Hessian wine typical of the region.

Winemakers' festival
The Winzerfest is held each year on the third weekend in September and lasts from Friday to the following Tuesday. It is the biggest event of its kind in Alzey. On the wine and sekt terrace are presented selected regional wines. Parallel with this is a yearly market with rides and games of all kinds.

Culinary specialities
Being the centre of a winegrowing region, the specialities are first and foremost wines and dishes that are made with wine, such as the Backesgrumbeere, a seasoned potato casserole with bacon, wine and sour cream, which is found throughout Rhenish Hesse. The winegrowing engineer Georg Scheu named a variety of grapevine after his workplace, the Perle von Alzey.

Economy and infrastructure
The town's main branches of industry are winegrowing, the resident specialized clinic, the building firm Wilhelm Faber GmbH & Co. KG, a Schlecker distribution centre, a Plus distribution centre, an administrative seat of the hypermarket chain real,- and Lufthansa daughter companies Lufthansa Technik AERO Alzey and LSG Sky Food. Moreover, Alzey is the region's service provision centre with a very broad array, for the town's size, of shopping, which is concentrated mainly in the industrial area.

Agriculture
Alzey is characterized by winegrowing and with 769 ha of vineyards currently worked, 69% with white wine varieties and 31% with red, it ranks sixth in size among winegrowing centres in Rhineland-Palatinate, and after Worms (1 490 ha) and Nierstein (783 ha), it is the third biggest winegrowing centre in Rhenish Hesse.

Transport
Alzey is found near the Autobahnkreuz Alzey, an Autobahn interchange at which the two Autobahnen A 61 (Venlo, Koblenz, Bingen, Alzey, Ludwigshafen, Hockenheim) and A 63 (Mainz, Alzey, Kaiserslautern) cross.

Alzey station has direct connections to Mainz Central Station by Regional-Express and Regionalbahn services on the Alzey–Mainz railway, and on the Rheinhessenbahn (railway) to Bingen and Worms. The Donnersbergbahn has connected Alzey with Kirchheimbolanden again since 1999. On weekends and holidays, trips on the Elsass-Express ("Alsace Express") to Wissembourg are possible.

The town belongs to the VRN. This tariff can also be used for trips to and from the Rhein-Nahe-Nahverkehrsverbund (RNN) area as far as Alzey.

Public institutions

 * DRK Krankenhaus Alzey (hospital)
 * Rheinhessen-Fachklinik Alzey (specialized clinic)
 * Seat of Alzey-Worms district council
 * Seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Alzey-Land
 * Seat of the branch office of the Bingen-Alzey finance office

Education

 * Primary schools:
 * Albert-Schweitzer-Schule
 * Nibelungenschule
 * St. Marienschule
 * Secondary school:
 * Gustav-Heinemann-Schulzentrum with:
 * Hauptschule
 * Realschule
 * Elisabeth Langgässer Gymnasium
 * Gymnasium am Römerkastell
 * Staatliches Aufbaugymnasium (state training Gymnasium)
 * Other:
 * two special schools (Volkerschule and Schule im Rotental)
 * District music school
 * Berufsbildende Schule Alzey (vocational school)
 * Rheinhessen Fachklinik nursing school

Honorary citizens

 * Georg Scheu
 * Willi Bechtolsheimer
 * Kurt Neumann
 * Walter Zuber
 * Karl-Heinz Kipp

Sons and daughters of the town

 * Felix Adler (1851–1933), philosopher and son of Rabbi Samuel Adler
 * August Belmont (1816–1890), German-American banker and politician. He was from the well known Jewish family Belmont in Alzey as a son of Simon Isaac, who had taken the name Belmont under Napoleon's name law.
 * Gisela Biedermann (born 1948), Liechtensteiner physician and politician
 * Heinrich Claß (1868–1953) was from 1908 to 1939 chairman of the Alldeutscher Verband, the influential nationalistic club in Imperial Germany. Claß was known for, among other things, works published under the pseudonyms Daniel Frymann and Einhart, in which he propagated his extreme nationalistic and expansionist politics.
 * Karl-Heinz Kipp (1924–2017), entrepreneur, founder of the Massa-Märkte (now belonging to the Metro Group), ranked 154 on Forbes's list of wealthiest people (2008) with an estimated fortune of US$6,300,000,000.
 * Elisabeth Langgässer (1899–1950), writer
 * Gunther Metz (born 1967), former professional footballer, active in 1 FC Kaiserslautern and Karlsruher SC in the 1990s, today co-trainer of the Lauterer Amateure.
 * Tarkan Tevetoğlu, (born 1972), Turkish pop musician with more than 15 million CDs sold. In Germany he is particularly well known for the title "Şımarık".

Famous people associated with the town

 * Dr. Samuel Adler (1809–1891) was from 1842 to 1857 Rabbi of Alzey's Jewish community. He was a supporter of the liberal movement in German Jewry and advocated, for example, the use of German in Jewish worship and a greater role for women. Dr. Adler went as a rabbi to the Temple Emanu-El in New York and became head of the USA's leading Jewish Reform community. Services held by Samuel Adler continued to be in his preferred German. His library is as far as has been possible maintained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.
 * Ludwig Bamberger (1823–1899), was a revolutionary, banker and politician. He belonged to the Democrats, who faced down Prussian troops at the Schlosspark in Kirchheimbolanden in 1848. Sentenced to death in absentia, Bamberger later became a banker (founding member of Deutsche Bank) and one of the leading liberal politicians after the German Empire was founded in 1871. He is described as the "Father" of the German Mark (founding of an independent issuing bank). He was for many years a Member of the Reichstag for the electoral district of Bingen-Alzey (from 1871 to 1893) and married Anna Belmont from Alzey.

title: Alzey


text:
User:Bsoft

Hello everyone,

I am a long time Wikipedia reader and contributor. I prefer to edit pages and clarify, update, or add information than to create new pages.

I'm a Computer Science student at the University of Colorado at Boulder in Boulder, CO.

I am the creator and administrator of WS Network, including Wikinote and Shortify.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Bsoft


text:
Talk:Law of large numbers

Refutation?
Let's say we do coin tosses and let's say we assume P(head) = 0.1 and P(tail) = 0.9 as probabilities. That's a legitimate probability function according to Kolmogorov. But now the LLN becomes obviously false. So there must be some premise of LLN that forbids this constellations. Which one is it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rs220675 (talk • contribs) 19:47, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

→I don't understand your message, but why would the LLN "become obviously false"? if you toss your coin an high number of times, the number of tail divided by the number of toss may lean toward 0.9, i don't understand your problem with that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:CB11:88F:A800:6CDA:5A2C:D4F2:CDC (talk) 11:32, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Strong vs Weak
The section on the strong law gets excessively wordy describing exactly what it means to be strong (in an unclear way, since a theorem can be strong when the hypothesis is weaker, (so that it implies the weak one and applies to more cases) or when both the hypothesis and conclusion are stronger, as is here.) I think it would be better to rewrite most of that verbage, specifically:

"The strong law implies the weak law but not vice versa, when the strong law conditions hold the variable converges both strongly (almost surely) and weakly (in probability). However the weak law may hold in conditions where the strong law does not hold and then the convergence is only weak (in probability)."

I suggest instead a general explanation of strong vs weak theorems be made in theorem and linked to from here (and perhaps any other place that uses the terms). I'll be adding a talk over there about that.

This section also gets wordy on another count, as it appears some are arguing as to whether the strong and weak forms are possibly equivalent. There are examples of probability distributions for which the weak law applies, but not the strong law. As such, I suggest the following be removed:

To date it has not been possible to prove that the strong law conditions are the same as those of the weak law.

as well as the clarification needed prior, and the citation needed after. Is the StackExchange conversation a sufficient reference to make such an edit?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jandew (talk • contribs) 22:49, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Possible merger?
Should Borel's law of large numbers get merged into this article and made a redirect page? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Yes, certainly. — ciphergoth 07:47, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

 * The problem with this is to make it clear exactly what "Borel's law of large numbers" is in the context of the larger article, since presumably Borel's law of large numbers is notable enough to br mention specifically. Melcombe (talk) 09:43, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Merge from Statistical regularity?
correction of misdirected merger proposal from March2008. Melcombe (talk) 13:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC) -- and copying from Talk:Law of Large Numbers corrected again — ciphergoth 07:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Is there any information over at Statistical regularity that might be of use? I added a tag to that article. If there is nothing worthwhile then perhaps simply replace it with a redirect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by User A1 (talk • contribs) 02:43, 30 March 2008

 * It looks to me very much like the two articles are covering the same ground, so yes, a merger makes sense to me. I can't see any material in that article that needs to be copied into this one. — ciphergoth 07:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. In fact the other article should probably simply be removed. OliAtlason (talk) 15:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I second that. Just replace Statistical regularity with a redirect to LLN. Aastrup (talk) 13:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that there may have been an intention that Statistical regularity should be part of a collection of non-mathematically-formal articles partly related to gambling, as in mention of Gambler's fallacy. Melcombe (talk) 09:47, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've read a bit on the subject and it would seem that's it's an umbrella term. I invite you to read Whitt, Ward (2002) Stochastic-Process Limits, An Introduction to Stochastic-Process Limits and their Application to Queues, Chapter 1: Experiencing Statistical Regularity. The first chapter is available online . Aastrup (talk) 22:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * And I've changed the Statistical regularity article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aastrup (talk • contribs) 22:20, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Interpreting
Consider the paragraph:
 * Interpreting this result, the weak law essentially states that for any nonzero margin specified, no matter how small, with a sufficiently large sample there will be a very high probability that the average of the observations will be close to the expected value, that is, within the margin.

This is simply explaining in words what convergence in probability is. I don't consider it useful. I'll remove it shortly if no-one objects. Aastrup (talk) 22:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

 * It is true that it is simply an explanation of convergence in probability in words. However, this may be very insightful to those who are not well versed in probability theory or even mathematical formalism.  The section that includes this paragraph would be substantially poorer without this explanation.  I suggest leaving it in.  OliAtlason (talk) 07:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I think any time you can add text interpretation to a math article it is hugely helpful, even if those who already know it all find it just extra words. PDBailey (talk) 22:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Generally I agree. But in this instance I don't. We are talking about convergence. The sample average converges towards the mean, this should simply be interpreted as the distance between the two grows smaller as the number in the sample increases and tend to infinity. That we are dealing with two forms of convergence and that thier exact definitions are different from oneanother is not of interest to the non-mathematician. And if the reader is interested in the exact difference between the two then there's an article about convergence of random variables. Aastrup (talk) 08:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And it is repetitive. Convergence in probability is stated in words twice. It would be neater if it just said Convergence in probability| and anybody who didn't know the term could go there and learn. Aastrup (talk) 08:55, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

 * I added ε to clarify that it was the margin to which the paragraph referred. I did so because, despite knowing the LLN and its mathematical formulation, it wasn't immediately clear to me what margin was being discussed.  TryingToUnderstand11 (talk) 05:22, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

What if there is no expected value?
From reading this article many can get the wrong impression that a sequence of averages almost surely converges, and converges to the expected value. But in reality the law of large numbers only works when expected value of the distribution exists, and there are many heavy-tailed distributions which don't have an expected value. Take, for example, the Cauchy distribution. A sequence of sample means won't converge, because the average of n samples drawn from the Cauchy distribution has *exactly* the same distribution as the samples. I think the article definitely needs a section about this misconception with examples and a neat graph of diverging sequence of averages, but as you might see, my English is too bad for writing it myself. --87.117.185.161 (talk) 12:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

A Proof of the Strong Law of Large Numbers
There is a proof of the Strong Law of Large Numbers that is accessible to students with an undergraduate study of measure theory, its established by applying the dominated convergence theorem to the limit of indicator functions, and then using the Weak Law of Large Numbers on the resulting limit of probabilities. Would this be appropriate for inclusion with the group of articles on the Laws of Large Numbers?Insightaction (talk) 21:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Image
I have created and uploaded an image similar to the current image, but in SVG format instead of GIF and with source code available. It also looks a little different and has different data (new data may be generated by anyone with the inclination using my provided source code (or their own)). I would like to propose that we switch to my image, File:Largenumbers.svg. -- Thin boy  00  @175, i.e. 03:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

 * Nice job! --Steve (talk) 06:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

 * By the way, I was motivated to make one myself, so I just put in the animated gif of red and blue balls. I think my animated one and your non-animated one are complementary and both should be in the article...different readers may respond better to one or the other. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions! :-) --Steve (talk) 08:54, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Merge suggestion
It has been suggested at the Proposed mergers page, that Law of averages be merged with Law of large numbers (LLN). Please state your comments regarding this action. --TitanOne (talk) 20:58, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Oppose Makes no sense on the average. History2007 (talk) 21:40, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose The two ideas are not the same, and there's already a cross-reference in both articles' "See also" sections. I don't think an article describing a theorem with an established proof should be merged with an article describing a lay term and its common usage in a false belief. (Although some texts may use the term "law of averages" to refer to the law of large numbers, the Gambler's fallacy usage is more common and the focus of the article.) The difficulty in preventing students from conflating the so-called-"law" of averages/Gambler's fallacy with the law of large numbers is an extremely common problem for introductory probability and statistics instructors. I agree that Law of averages needs to be merged, but I think it should be merged into Gambler's fallacy instead (maybe with a disambiguation note at the top for users arriving via Law of averages who intend to find the Law of large numbers). --Firefeather (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Disagree.... Looking through "google books" and the web, the term "Law of averages" refers to either law of large numbers (ratio of heads to tails approaches 1, which is true), or gambler's fallacy (a run of heads is compensated by a run of tails, so difference between heads and tails approaches 0, which is false). The way it's presented here now is gambler's fallacy. And gambler's fallacy seems somewhat more common online, but I didn't look enough to be sure. Therefore my initial impression is that this page should be a disambiguation or short article sending interested readers to learn more at either law of large numbers or gambler's fallacy. What do other people think? --Steve (talk) 22:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: I just noticed that the discussion was also occurring on the Law of averages talk page, so I have copied this earlier comment by Steve from that page. --Firefeather (talk) 21:22, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Delete this article (meaning Law of Averages), with redirect to LLN. The cited source uses the term “law of averages” as a synonym for LLN, and does not provide the interpretation given in this article. The examples section looks like WP:OR. The first one describes the gambler's fallacy, for which we already have a fairly developed article; the second example should be dubbed “idiot’s fallacy” or something like that — really, is there a person who would think that out of 99 coin tosses, exactly 49.5 of them should be heads?; the third example is just a corollary from the strong law of large numbers, or from the second Borel-Cantelli lemma; the last example is not even funny — people don't think that in the longrun a good team and a bad team would perform equally, that would contradict the mere notion of “skill”.  // st pasha  » 22:18, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: As above, the discussion was also occurring on the Law of averages talk page despite it being pointed out that discussion is here, so I have copied the immediately above to here. Melcombe (talk) 09:41, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

When the LLN does not hold?
I'm looking for a quick answer, trying to resolve a certain issue. Does the LLN hold even when we're collecting samples from and for a model/function that has infinite VC dimension?

I was reading some papers on statistical learning (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=76371). They mention that "C is uniformly learnable if and only if the VC dimension of C is finite," where "a learning function for C is a function that, given a large enough randomly drawn sample of any target concept in C, returns a region in E (a hypothesis) that is with high probability a good approximation to the target concept." My understanding of "concept" here is function. Perhaps my understanding of "concept" is wrong or the LLN has limitations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.135.222.152 (talk) 04:02, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

 * Yes; if the VC dimension is infinite the learning function (with high probability) still converges pointwise to the correct characteristic function. But the convergence won't be uniform. Unfortunately, this is hardly a "quick" answer.... Ben Standeven (talk) 17:48, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Finite variance
The article says that finite variance is not required, without citation or justification. Every single other source I saw said that finite variance is in fact needed. This writing titled Law of Large Numbers even specifically says that finite variance is needed, and uses the Cauchy distribution as an example where the variance is not finite, and the Law of Large Numbers does not hold (in the section 'Cauchy case'). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.49.144.162 (talk) 10:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
 * There are citations separately (slightly later) for the weak and strong forms of the law and when they hold. The article is quite specific about what these laws mean, but it may be that your source says the "law" means something else, such as the variance of the mean descreasing to zero (for which the variance would need to exist): in fact your source seems to be using this in its proof. In this case your source is stating a sufficient condition for the law to hold ... it can and does hold under weaker conditions. The "law" is the description of the behaviour of the mean, not really any one statement of conditions under which it can be said/shown to hold. However, the article could do with better citations. Melcombe (talk) 12:44, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

 * The Cauchy distribution is a bad example, it does not have a mean, and hence no finite variance or higher moments. And the proof using characteristic functions does not seem to use the assumption of finite variance. I'll add a citetation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.89.65.201 (talk) 08:25, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Wiki allows advertising now?
Why on earth does an article on the law of large numbers lead to Nasim Taleb's vanity page? I have also deleted the rest of the sentence, which was unencyclopedic, and unnecessary. If you disagree, could you please show a reference from the serious lln literature that mentions lightning or references the black swan?

Otherwise it's not appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.235.94 (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
 * First of all, you removed information without explaining in an edit summary -- twice. That makes the edits subject to revert. Secondly, it might help the rest of us who can't read your mind to explain what you are referring to with your comment "lead to Nasim Taleb's vanity page". And finally, give a detailed explanation as to why you think the sentence "This assumes that all possible die roll outcomes are known and that Black Swan events such as a die landing on edge or being struck by lightning mid-roll are not possible or ignored if they do occur" is "unencyclopedic and unnecessary"; it is linked to a page with well sourced explanations as to why it is enyclopedic. Additionally, if you think Black swan theory is unencyclopedic you need to make your case at Talk:Black swan theory. Something very important you need to learn about Wikipedia: It is a collaborative project; it is not your personal website or plaything. Cresix (talk) 19:42, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

 * I agree with deleting the sentence. It makes a simple thing sound complicated.

 * There is a universal common-sense intuitive understanding of what it means to "roll a die". According to that understanding, black swan events are irrelevant and the simple sentence is completely correct.

 * Go find a random person on the street and ask him to roll five dice and calculate the average. Suppose that one of the five dice lands on a corner, or is eaten by a squirrel. The person will naturally and immediately pick up a die and re-roll it to get the fifth number to average. In effect, they will be ignoring the "bad roll". What else would you expect them to do? If the squirrel eats the die, then maybe they would count it as "rolling a 10 trillion"?? No! That's silly, no one would ever think to do that. The only sensible thing to do is to re-roll. If they did not have a spare die, they would say "I was not able to successfully roll the die, go ask someone else." People understand that "rolling a die" is not complete until you have an answer which is either 1,2,3,4,5,6.

 * There are two requirements for the term "black swan events" to be technically applicable: The events are (1) rare, and (2) sufficiently consequential to affect long-term average behavior. For example, the performance of a stockmarket investor, even averaged over 15 years, may be significantly altered by the amount he lost in a single hour during a market crash. So that's a black swan event. When you are rolling dice, a black swan event is impossible because the distribution of possible numerical results is so restricted: 1,2,3,4,5,6. It is never 10 billion!

 * So again, black swan events should certainly not be mentioned in the context of rolling dice. It is an irrelevant tangent. --Steve (talk) 01:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree with Steve. McKay (talk) 03:30, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

A few technical remarks
"with the accuracy increasing as more dice are rolled." This is not correct, and in the figure the accuracy for n=100 is greater than for n=200 or even 300.

"Convergence in probability is also called weak convergence of random variables". I don't think this is standard or fortunate. Convergence in distribution is already called weak convergence. The MSC (Mathematics Subject Classification) category 60F05 is "Central limit and other weak theorems", meaning theorems with convergence in distribution, not convergence in probability (as far as I know).

"Differences between the weak law and the strong law". It may be interesting to add here that the Weak Law may hold even if the expected value does not exist (see e.g. Feller's book). This underlines that, in their full generality, none of the laws follows directly from the other.

"Uniform law of large numbers". The uniform LLN holds under quite weaker hypotheses. This is definitely uninteresting to the average reader, but a reference to the Blum-DeHardt LLN or the Glivenko-Cantelli problem might be very valuable to a small fraction of readers.

"Borel's law of large numbers, named after Émile Borel, states that if an experiment is repeated a large number of times, independently under identical conditions, then the proportion of times that any specified event occurs approximately equals the probability of the event's occurrence on any particular trial;" The LLN as stated might as well be Bernoulli's original LLN from 1713. There seems to be no reason to attribute *that* statement to Borel. Compare e.g. http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Borel_strong_law_of_large_numbers93.156.35.219 (talk) 02:30, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Why?
OK, I'll be up front and admit that the math on this page is beyond me. I looked up the Law of Large Numbers to try and find out why it happens. (I mean why it happens, not how it happens.) So can someone explain in plain (or even complicated) English why something that is random each time you do it (eg tossing a coin or betting on roulette) tends to give a pattern over a large number of incidences? Why is it that we can anticipate (roughly) what the average will be, rather than its being completely random and not able to be anticipated? Surely there's a place for that issue in the article, if there is some literature on it. Thanks.89.100.155.6 (talk) 20:36, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Difference between the Strong and the Weak Law - mistake
"In particular, it implies that with probability 1, we have that for any ε > 0 the inequality holds for all large enough n. ". I do not believe this sentence (if I am wrong, please ignore me and delete this post). If you fix ε > 0 then for every n there is some small probability that. Indeed, with non-zero probability all the first n tosses are say > \mu + ε.

 * I agree, that the statement is wrong. However your explanation makes no sense to me. The strong law uses almost sure pointwise convergence. The wrong statement corresponds to uniform convergence.

--93.219.149.62 (talk) 19:54, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

 * These two comments seem correct to me : the mistake in the article stems from the fact that, given $$\varepsilon > 0$$, the n for which $$|\overline{X}_n -\mu| < \varepsilon$$ depends on the point in the set of convergence (the non-uniformity alluded to in the second comment).

 * For example, for the flip of a fair coin, for any n there is a probability $$1/2^{n-1}$$ that the empirical mean deviates by 1/2 from the theoretical expectation ; the strong LLN only states that for these bad initial n tosses the error will a.s. be corrected later.

 * This seems like a fairly serious mistake to me so I'll immediately remove the wrong statement. jraimbau (talk) 09:07, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

condition E(|X|)<inf is same as that the random variables x has Lebesgue integrateable expectation
What if we would use different legitimate integration methods for expectation definition as:
 * 1) REDIRECT []
 * 2) REDIRECT []

which is much more general than Lebesgue one?

Then we will shurely have random variables with finite expectation where L.L.N do not hold.http://www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~schectex/ccc/gauge/venn.gif — Preceding unsigned comment added by Itaijj (talk • contribs) 20:23, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

 * This whole section about "Lebesgue integrable" random variables makes *no mathematical sense whatsoever*. The person who wrote this clearly does not know the slightest thing about math. You cannot just take any random variable and start "integrating" it with respect to the Lebesgue measure. First study math (and measure theory) before you come to Wikipedia to "educate" people with your wisdom that is nothing more than pure ignorance and stupidity. 2A02:A466:58DC:1:D9:BECA:6E31:A8D7 (talk) 13:41, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Methodological mistakes
In my opinion, many statements expressed on this page are not correct, such as:

"It follows from the law of large numbers that the empirical probability of success in a series of Bernoulli trials will converge to the theoretical probability. For a Bernoulli random variable, the expected value is the theoretical probability of success, and the average of n such variables (assuming they are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.)) is precisely the relative frequency."

"The LLN is important because it "guarantees" stable long-term results for the averages of random events."

"According to the law of large numbers, if a large number of six-sided die are rolled, the average of their values (sometimes called the sample mean) is likely to be close to 3.5, with the precision increasing as more dice are rolled."

This confuses conclusions from the mathematical theorem proven from Kolmogorov's axioms (of which there is very little for the axioms are very weak and do not provide a definition or constraints strong enough for a meaningful interpretation of probability), from its intuitive interpretation that requires additional assumptions, equivalent to assuming the law itself true a priori. See a more elaborate explanation here:

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/777493/do-the-kolmogorovs-axioms-permit-speaking-of-frequencies-of-occurence-in-any-me

Stable relative frequencies in the real world are discovered empirically and are not conclusions from any mathematical theorem. Ascribing "P's" to events with a frequency interpretation in mind is the same as already assuming the relative frequencies of those events converge in the limit of an infinite number of trails to a definite number, this "P". The only thing the theorem allows to conclude, is that if all the relative frequencies involved in the given reasoning are stable in the first place, the difference from a finite number of trails between the measured and "ideal" mean is likely to be less than so and so.

Jarosław Rzeszótko (talk) 06:56, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

The first example is awkward
The six numbers on a die are interchangeable with any other set of symbols - is an integer mean relevant? My first guess is that the result would be 3, if I'm looking at random integers [0-6], rather than 7/2 which seems like part of a different concept, or an artifact of the way dice are labeled Cegandodge (talk) 03:34, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Possible issue with statement of uniform LLN
Looking through the references currently given for the uniform law of large numbers, I notice a technical issue in the current statement. One of the references (Newey & McFadden 1994) gives a formulation of the uniform LLN which allows for the function f to be continuous almost everywhere, but provides only for uniform convergence in probability. The other (Jennrich 1969) gives a formulation which allows only for the function f to be continuous everywhere (not allowing a set of measure 0 on which discontinuities may occur), but gives the stronger mode of a.s. convergence. Is there an obvious synthesis of these two statements which yields the hybrid given in the article (a.e. continuous function f as well as a.s. convergence) or is there a reference out there which gives the stronger statement? If not, it may be worth revising the statement to more accurately reflect the references. Gillespie09 22:17, 21 March 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gillespie09 (talk • contribs)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:03, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

== add a category to recall the fact that despite the deviation to the mean decreases with increasing numbers, the standard deviation (so the raw deviation between theoretical output and the actual one) increases when the number of trial increases ==

I don't know if this page is active, but it's a classic mistake to think that since by increasing the number of trials, the empirical average gets closer to its theoretical value, it's the same for the sum of the outcome, that would get closer to the sum of the average outcome, while in fact, it's not the case (and on the contrary, the standard deviation increases), and this value converges only if we divide it by the number of trials.

and i think it would be good, to underline the fact that only the average converges and not the sum of the outcome minus the theoretical outcome, to add a paragraph about this, and also a diagram showing a dice throwing experiment (with excel, with the number of throws on the abscissa, and the sum of the results on the ordinate, so that we can see that the curve of the results doesn't converge towards the theoretical curve), and next to it the curve of the empirical average (of the same experiment) which we would see converging towards the theoretical line

I don't do the modification myself, because I'm not too used to the wikipedia codes (and I already got a slap on the wrist for doing that, but, as I have the impression that this page doesn't seem to be very active, if nobody reacts after a month or so, I'll do the modification myself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:CB11:88F:A800:6CDA:5A2C:D4F2:CDC (talk) 11:21, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Bad introduction
The entire introductory section is currently as follows:

"In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value and tends to become closer to the expected value as more trials are performed.

"The LLN is important because it guarantees stable long-term results for the averages of some random events. For example, while a casino may lose money in a single spin of the roulette wheel, its earnings will tend towards a predictable percentage over a large number of spins. Any winning streak by a player will eventually be overcome by the parameters of the game. Importantly, the law applies (as the name indicates) only when a large number of observations are considered. There is no principle that a small number of observations will coincide with the expected value or that a streak of one value will immediately be "balanced" by the others (see the gambler's fallacy).

"It is also important to note that the LLN only applies to the average. Therefore, while

 * $$\lim_{n\to\infty} \sum_{i=1}^n \frac{X_i} n = \overline{X}$$

other formulas that look similar are not verified, such as the raw deviation from "theoretical results":

 * $$\sum_{i=1}^n X_i - n\times\overline{X}$$

not only does it not converge toward zero as n increases, but it tends to increase in absolute value as n increases."

It is an astonishingly terrible idea to use a wholly unexplained symbol in the introductory paragraph ... or anywhere.

The introduction uses infinitely many unexplained symbols.

I hope that someone knolwedgeable about this topic can rewrite the introduction so that it is comprehensible to most readers.

Preferably by someone who understands what writing an encyclopedia article entails.

BUT ALSO: The introduction states the law of large numbers as an equality. It is not an equality; it is an equality with probability one. 2601:200:C000:1A0:808C:2579:CA92:A870 (talk) 15:48, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Bad writing
The introductory section contains this passage:

"''It is also important to note that the LLN only applies to the average. Therefore, while

 * $$\lim_{n\to\infty} \sum_{i=1}^n \frac{X_i} n = \overline{X}$$

other formulas that look similar are not verified, such as the raw deviation from "theoretical results":

 * $$\sum_{i=1}^n X_i - n\times\overline{X}$$

not only does it not converge toward zero as n increases, but it tends to increase in absolute value as n increases."

But: The meaning of the term "theoretical results" is not necessarily clear to many readers.

Unfortunately, the meaning of the term " "theoretical results" " (the previous term, but ths time inside quootation marks) is even less clear. 2601:200:C000:1A0:3938:3645:9394:290D (talk) 01:52, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect statement
One of the introductory sentences:

not only does it not converge toward zero as n increases, but it tends to increase in absolute value as n increases."

Is false, the difference in absolute value will be unbounded, but it will also be 0 an infinite amount of times. The lim inf will be zero, and the lim sup will be infinity. 2A01:11:8A10:8690:9A7:D52C:C665:FDF (talk) 23:31, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Law of large numbers


text:
Them (novel)

Them (stylized in all lowercase) is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, the third in her "Wonderland Quartet" following A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967) and Expensive People (1968) and preceding Wonderland (1971). It was published by Vanguard in 1969 and it won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1970.

Many years and many awards later, Oates surmised that them and Blonde (2000) were the works she will most be remembered for, and would most want a new reader to select, though she added that "I could as easily have chosen a number of titles."

Genesis
In the book's foreword, Oates writes that them is based for the most part upon the life of a real family. The main character, "Maureen Wendall," contacted Oates by mail after she had failed a college course taught by the author, and these letters are included (presumably verbatim) in the novel, about two-thirds of the way through the text.

Saying that "the novel practically wrote itself," Oates organized the story and recast it as fiction, but at certain points she revised the text to include "Maureen Wendall's" words verbatim. Oates noted that, rather than sensationalizing the story of the Wendalls to make slum life more lurid, she softened some sections so that they would not overwhelm the reader. She said that the confessional aspect was, at least temporarily, extremely therapeutic to "Maureen Wendall" and that all the family members were still living.

In an addendum to the afterword, Oates said that the "realist" element was a literary device: all characters and events were entirely fictional. She wrote Maureen's letters, and the "Miss Oates" to whom the letters are written is also a fictional character. At the time (1962–1967), Oates used the name of Joyce Smith.

Plot
Them explores the complex struggles of American life through three down-on-their-luck characters—Loretta, Maureen, and Jules—who are attempting to reach normality and the American dream through marriage and money.

The story begins with Loretta Botsford and her brother Brock as teenagers, living in the 1930s in a "fair-sized city on a midwestern canal". Loretta falls in love with Bernie Malin, and sleeps with him. Later in the night, Brock fatally shoots Bernie in the head. Loretta runs away, and meets Howard Wendall, an older cop to whom she confesses the death of Bernie Malin.

They later marry, and she bears son Jules (who is hinted to be Bernie Malin's son). Loretta and Howard live close to Mama and Papa Wendall's house, on the south side of town. Soon after the birth of Jules, Howard is busted for taking money from prostitutes. The Wendalls move into the country house with Howard's family, where Loretta bore her daughters Maureen and Betty.

When World War II breaks out, Howard leaves his family to fight in Europe. Meanwhile, Jules grows up to be a fast, energetic child who hangs around older children, and is never still. Maureen is a quiet, shy, delicate girl, while Betty is a smart aleck. Jules as a child displays a fascination with fire when he burns down a deserted barn, and when a plane crashes in Detroit.

Loretta decides to move to Detroit with her children while Howard is still at war. Jules takes on the role of the "bad boy" who hangs out with kids who steal from stores and smoke at school. Many conclude that Jules will not live past twenty. Soon Jules is expelled from the Catholic school and sent to a public school apart from his sisters.

As time progresses, Jules becomes more involved in petty theft but always has hopes for a better life. He falls passionately in love with a rich girl, Nadine, from the suburbs, whom he helps to run away to Texas. She abandons him in a hotel when he becomes ill, and steals his car and money.

After Howard dies in a work accident, Loretta remarries. She relies increasingly on Maureen to run the household. Feeling the desire to escape, Maureen turns to prostitution to build an escape fund. When her stepfather discovers her secret, he savagely beats her. He is convicted and jailed for assault, resulting in Loretta divorcing him, and Maureen suffering a year-long nervous breakdown. She gradually recovers with the care of Loretta's brother Brock, who has unexpectedly returned, and the letters of Jules, who slowly drifts back North from Texas.

Some time later, Jules is doing better in business working for his uncle when he reconnects with Nadine. She has married, but they initiate an affair. She has mental problems and shoots him. Jules survives, but has lost all his drive. Maureen has moved out and is working as a typist and taking night classes. She sets her sights on her professor, a married man, and they begin an affair. When Maureen coolly tells her mother of her plans to become a housewife, Loretta is incensed.

After his recovery, Jules is a defeated man, maintaining several affairs. He rapes a girl and later pimps her out. He also becomes involved with a group of intellectual radicals. He is present at the 1967 Detroit riots, when Loretta's apartment is among the buildings burned. In the chaos, Jules sinks to a new low and commits murder.

Later, Jules visits Maureen, who has isolated herself from the rest of her family in Dearborn, Michigan with her husband and is expecting a child. Loretta is surviving, and Jules plans to try his fortunes in California.

Reception
The novel has been praised for its commentary on the difficulties faced by the American working class and depiction of lower-class tragedy through its descriptions of urban life and the interweaving of colloquial language with prose.

Geoffrey Wolff wrote, "This novel is a charnel house of Gothic paraphernalia: blood, fire, insanity, anarchy, lust, corruption, death by bullets, death by cancer, death by plane crash, death by stabbing, beatings, crime, riot and even unhappiness.  Its ruling principles are hate and violence." Entela Kushta lamented, "At the conclusion of the novel, the Wendall family is completely destroyed. Loretta has lost track of her children, and Maureen takes the final step toward removing herself from the old family by rejecting her own brother. Though they go on searching for love, Oates's urban dwellers can find none...It is the multitudes of people and the continuous displacement of people which make familiarity impossible and withdrawal a likely defense."

Susan Koppelman Cornillon wrote that "one is uncertain, while reading the works of Miss Oates, whether or not she does, in fact, separate her own attitudes and opinions on the issue of sex role from her characters." She suggested, "A writer can portray the unconscious perpetration of socialization on her characters without herself reinforcing the attitudes being internalized by her characters," but implied that Oates's characters came across mostly as sexist stereotypes.

George Vecsey made a reference to the novel in his critique of baseball fans in 1985: "I pointed ahead on Michigan Avenue to the old battleship-gray ballpark and said, 'Them,' in the Joyce Carol Oates sense of the word. The problem with sports these days is the fans."

Awards
The novel won a National Book Award in 1970.

title: Them (novel)


text:
User talk:Bcorr/Archive 200401

Archived talk from January 2004

• Bonne année
bonsoir Brian. It has been a long time. Hope you had nice holidays (if you had) and unpacking is going on well. I intend to buy a house this year, so I foresee packing and unpacking as well. Right now, I limit myself to pleasant discussions with the banker :-)

my best

PomPom 23:43, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * Salut! Je toi enverrai un courriel, parce qu'il y a est trop des choses à discuter ici.... BCorr ¤ Брайен 17:53, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * yes indeed, I understand it was not suitable here. I thank you deeply for trusting me to tell me this. I will answer to you later, when I gathered my thoughts. But in short, I think what you did was courageous and honest. Very important. I hope you feel well. PomPom 00:14, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Étapisme
I just realized that you wrote the sovereignty-association page. Good job. I just wanted to let you know that I am projecting to correct one error regarding what étapisme is and also rearrage the page so that that another article named history of Quebec sovereignist movement can deal with the historical side. Eventually, I will make full history of Quebec independentist movement. I invite you to help me out if you want. Mathieugp 04:20, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I've been away for a bit, but I will try to check tonight or tomorrow. Thanks, BCorr ¤ Брайен 21:47, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• LongevityMyths
I just discovered that you flagged my Longevity Myths article as a "copyright infringement"...''IT MOST CERTAINLY IS NOT!!' I have thirty years of Guinness Books and the ONLY SENTENCE that came from there was the one clearly identified as a quote.The article is my own original work and covers more ground than theirs and is more up-to-date than any edition in which they bothered to explore the subject.It draws significantly on my own supercentenarian research (I maintain the list found as the external reference at the end of the supercentenarian article,which I also started) and frankly the Guinness Book in recent years has taken its lead in longevity claims from me and my colleagues.(Ask della.howes@guinnessrecords.com,the current researcher in that department,if you don't believe me).I spelled out some of the differences in my and their references to the Li Chung-yun claim in the Copyright Infringements article,I can get you their exact text on it if you like. --Louis Epstein/le@put.com/12.144.5.2

 * Hi. Are you sure that Longevity myths is a copyright violation? Why? Optim 00:34, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * Louis is correct -- I left a reply on the article's talk page. Sorry it's taken so long to reply -- I've been away from the 'pedia for a couple of weeks. With apologies, BCorr ¤ Брайен 21:47, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Mediator?
Hello Brian. Why would not you ask Jimbo to be a mediator ? ant

 * None of us are specialists either :-) Only people willing to help to the best of their ability. I think you would be good at that. I do not think it would require a lot of time. Because a lot is already going on through regular mediation. But...I think there is need for all the arbitration stuff to proceed, that is very important. And arbitration should never occur before mediation had had a try. So, possibly, it will only be used for those cases that are nearly desperate ?
 * It is also a spirit, learning ways of helping ihmo, and then showing the way, teaching others what we learn. I do not expect myself to ever do mediation on the english wikipedia, I do not think any one would choose me for that, but I can learn about it, no ? Anyway, as for now, I am still not part of it, so...:-)

title: User talk:Bcorr/Archive 200401


text:
V (operating system)

The V operating system (sometimes written V-System) is a discontinued microkernel distributed operating system that was developed by faculty and students in the Distributed Systems Group at Stanford University from 1981 to 1988, led by Professors David Cheriton and Keith A. Lantz. V was the successor to the Thoth operating system and Verex kernel that Cheriton had developed in the 1970s. Despite similar names and close development dates, it is unrelated to UNIX System V.

Features
The key concepts in V are multithreading and synchronous message passing. The original V terminology uses process for what is now commonly called a thread, and team for what is now commonly called a process consisting of multiple threads sharing an address space. Communication between threads in V uses synchronous message passing, with short, fixed-length messages that can include access rights for the receiver to read or write part of the sender's address space before replying. The same message-passing interface is used both between threads within one process, between threads of different processes within one machine, and between threads on different machines connected by a local Ethernet. A thread receiving a message is not required to reply to it before receiving other messages; this distinguished the model from Ada rendezvous.

One common pattern for using the messaging facility is for clients to send messages to a server requesting some form of service. From the client side, this looks much like a remote procedure call (RPC). The convenience of an automatic stub generator was lacking, but in contrast, the client can pass one parameter by reference, which is not possible with other RPC implementations. From the server side the model differs more from RPC, since by default all client requests are multiplexed onto one server thread. The server is free to explicitly fork threads to handle client requests in parallel, however; if this is done, the server-side model is much like RPC too.

V was never an end in itself for the Stanford group; rather, it was used as a vehicle for many different research projects in distributed operating systems and networking. Much like other operating system efforts of its day (such as Sprite), V was a complete system that was mostly self hosting. Many students ran V as the only operating system on their diskless SUN workstations or MicroVAX workstations. Compiles could be done either on V, or on VAX Unix machines that provided file service in a more stable environment than the ever-changing research system.

V did have some notable impacts. After the initial implementation on one computer, the Versatile Message Transaction Protocol (VMTP) was developed to extend the send-receive-reply system call semantics over a local area network. The protocol included multicast support developed by Steve Deering as a graduate student in the group. The Internet Protocol layer to support this evolved into the IP multicast standard.

The V-System was used for graphical user interface (GUI) research. The Virtual Graphics Terminal Service (VGTS) provided a modular windowing system for both local and remote applications. The little-known W Window System got its name because it was first hosted on the V operating system, and the better-known X Window System in turn got its name because its first version was based partly on W.

V also spawned another pure microkernel effort at Apple Computer known as Vanguard, which added a number of improvements to the basic system. Vanguard later disappeared in a reorganization.

The Tektronix VM700 television measurement instrument was developed in a networked V environment in the late 1980s and ran a lightly modified version of the V operating system; this device was manufactured and sold for many years.

Ridge Computers' Ridge Operating System (ROS) was a commercial system based on Stanford's V-System.

Commands
The following is a list of workstation commands that are supported by the V operating system version 6.0 command-line interface.

 * addcorr
 * amaze
 * ar
 * biopsy
 * bitcompile
 * bits
 * boise
 * build
 * cat
 * cc68
 * cd
 * checkers
 * checkexecs
 * ci
 * clear
 * clock
 * co
 * cp
 * cpdir
 * cx
 * dale
 * date
 * debug
 * debugvgts
 * define
 * delcorr
 * delexec
 * destroy
 * diff
 * do
 * domake
 * dopar
 * doseq
 * draw
 * echo
 * fexecute
 * freemem
 * gftodvi
 * gftyoe
 * grep
 * hack
 * ident
 * instances
 * internetserver
 * iphost
 * killprog
 * listdir
 * listdesc
 * login
 * logout
 * mail
 * memserver
 * mf
 * migrateprog
 * mon
 * name
 * newterm
 * pagemode
 * password
 * pc68
 * pwd
 * pwx
 * Q
 * query
 * queryexec
 * ranlib68
 * rcs
 * rcsdiff
 * rcsmerge
 * rename
 * rlog
 * rm
 * sed
 * serial
 * show
 * sleep
 * sort
 * startexec
 * storagestats
 * stuffboot
 * tail
 * talk
 * telnet
 * telnetserver
 * testexcept
 * timeipc
 * timekernel
 * tsort
 * type
 * undefine
 * ved
 * vemacs
 * w
 * wc
 * wh
 * whi

title: V (operating system)


text:
Blue Ridge Scenic Railway

The Blue Ridge Scenic Railway is a heritage railroad in northern Georgia.

Based in Blue Ridge, Georgia, United States it follows the former Marietta and North Georgia Railroad line along the Toccoa River north to McCaysville, Georgia, and its Twin city of Copperhill, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of the Georgia Northeastern Railroad, which also operates freight service on the same line. The Blue Ridge Scenic Railway started operations in 1998.

Trains generally run Fridays to Mondays from late March to the last weekend in December, daily (except Wednesdays) during spring break (first full week of April), and summer (mid-June to the end of July), and from October until Thanksgiving. A special Christmas train runs Thanksgiving weekend, the weekends following, and the full week prior to Christmas itself. Normal trips resume for the final week of the year.

title: Blue Ridge Scenic Railway