Assuming the chances of a random vaccine being successful is 10% or 0.1 (reasonable, derived from historic record), and these chances of success are independent of each other (less realistic, I think), the probability of no successful vaccine, ie all trials fail, is 0.9^10=0.3487
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The expected number of vaccines is 1, but expectation doesn’t have meaning in the case of a single event, it’s the long term average. If you roll a six-sided fair die the expected score is 3.5, but you’re not going to get that score rolling a die once.
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As always the arithmetic is only the very last step of a mostly hidden process, setting up the model, and there is a lot we must be careful of, (and discuss more openly and examine more robustly) when setting up the model. https://twitter.com/danielhowdon/status/1278989293764120577?s=21 … https://t.co/inRHOAueRx
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Yes of course if they will help!
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What was this from?? I gotta see the ridiculousness myself
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Sonia I understand none of your maths tweets but I always love reading them. I find it very helpful to counter my general habit of trusting numbers when they are given to me by what I perceive as experts. Thank you

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I do try to make the maths tweets understandable without much background. But “don’t trust numbers too much without interrogating them a bit” is always a good takeaway!
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I thought I had muted that word!
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