Pretend for a moment that you are an ordinary citizen with very little knowledge of probability theory, and you are supposed to vote an approval ballot.
There will be at least two candidates (favorite and worst) that you know precisely how to categorize (approved and not approved, respectively). After consulting friends and listening to experts (such as your favorite candidate) whose political and/or mathematical judgment you trust, you will have a good idea about how to categorize most of the rest of the candidates. Any remaining decisions can be decided with the flip of a coin. In any case where you feel the coin gives you the wrong choice, just ignore the coin and go with your gut feeling; you are not honor bound to abide by the decision of the coin :-) This coin tossing strategy for making difficult yes/no decisions has been around for a long time. It is simply a device for accessing the wisdom of your subconscious mind. Not that the coin magically gives you the right answer, rather when it gives you the wrong answer, your subconscious awareness is triggered and amplified by a sense of alarm that the wrong decision is about to be implemented. Forest Forest ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
