The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-timeBy Mark Haddon, first published in 2003.

《奇怪的夜狗事件》，【英】马克·哈顿著，2003年首次出版。

101.

Mr. Jeavons said that I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end. I know he meant this because this is what he said.

This is because Mr. Jeavons doesn't understand numbers.

Here is a famous story called The Monty Hall Problem which I have included in this book because it illustrates what I mean.

There used to be a column called Ask Marilyn in a magazine called Parade in America. And this column was written by Marilyn vos Savant and in the magazine it said that she had the highest IQ in the world in the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame. And in the column she answered maths questions sent in by readers. And in September 1990 this question was sent in by Craig F. Whitaker of Columbia, Maryland (but it is not what is called a direct quote because I have made it simpler and easier to understand)

You are on a game show on television. On this game show the idea is to win a car as a prize. The game show host shows you three doors. He says that there is a car behind one of the doors and there are goats behind the other two doors. He asks you to pick a door. You pick a door but the door is not opened. Then the game show host opens one of the doors you didn't pick to show a goat (because he knows what is behind the doors). Then he says that you have one final chance to change your mind before the doors are opened and you get a car or a goat. So he asks you if you want to change your mind and pick the other unopened door instead. What should you do?

Marilyn vos Savant said that you should always change and pick the final door because the chances are 2 in 3 that there will be a car behind that door.

But if you use your intuition you think that chance is 50-50 because you think there is an equal chance that the car is behind any door.

Lots of people wrote to the magazine to say that Marilyn vos Savant was wrong, even when she explained very carefully why she was right. Of the letters she got about the problem, 92% said that she was wrong and lots of these were from mathematicians and scientists. Here are some of the things that they said

I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error.

-- Robert Sachs, Ph.D., George Mason University

There is enough mathematical illiteracy in this country, and we don't need the world's highest IQ propagating more. Shame!

-- Scott Smith, Ph.D., University of Florida

I am in shock that after being corrected by at least three mathematicians, you still do not see your mistake.

-- Kent Ford, Dickinson State University

I am sure you will receive many letters from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for help with future columns.

-- W. Robert Smith, Ph.D., Georgia State University

You are utterly incorrect... How many irate mathematicians are needed to get you to change your mind?

-- E. Ray Bobo, Ph.D., Georgetown University

If all those Ph.D.'s were wrong, the country would be in very serious trouble.

-- Everett Harman, Ph.D., U.S. Army Research Institute

But Marilyn vos Savant was right. And here are 2 ways you can show this.

Firstly you can do it by maths like this

Let the doors be called X, Y and Z.

Let Cx be the event that the car is behind door X and so on.

Let Hx be the event that the host opens door X and so on.

Supposing that you choose door X, the possibility that you win a car if you then switch your choice is given by the following formula

P(Hz ^ Cy) + P(Hy ^ Cz) = P(Cy)·P (Hz | Cy) + P(Cz)·P(Hy | Cz) = (1/3 · 1) + (1/3 · 1) = 2/3

The second way you can work it out is by making a picture of all the possible outcomes like this

So if you change, 2 times out of 3 you get a car. And if you stick, you only get a car 1 time out of 3.

And this shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer.

It also shows that Mr. Jeavons was wrong and numbers are sometimes very complicated and not very straightforward at all. And that is why I like The Monty Hall Problem.

103.

When I got home Rhodri was there. Rhodri is the man who works for Father, helping him do heating maintenance and boiler repair. And he sometimes comes round to the house in the evening to drink beer with Father and watch the television and have a conversation. Rhodri was wearing a pair of white dungarees which had dirty marks all over them and he had a gold ring on the middle finger of his left hand and he smelled of something I do not know the name of which Father often smells of when he comes home from work.

I put my licorice laces and my Milky Bar in my special food box on the shelf, which Father is not allowed to touch because it is mine.

Then Father said, "And what have you been up to, young man?"

And I said, "I went to the shop to get some licorice laces and a Milky Bar."

And he said, "You were a long time."

And I said, "I talked to Mrs. Alexander's dog outside the shop. And I stroked him and he sniffed my trousers." Which was another white lie.

Then Rhodri said to me, "God, you do get the third degree, don't you."

But I didn't know what the third degree was.

And he said, "So, how are you doing, captain?"

And I said, "I'm doing very well, thank you," which is what you're meant to say.

And he said, "What's 251 times 864?"

And I thought about this and I said,"216,864." Because it was a really easy sum because you just multiply 864 X 1,000,which is 864,000. Then you divide it by 4, which is 216,000, and that's 250 X 864. Then you just add another 864 onto it to get 251 X 864. And that's 216,864.

And I said, "Is that right?"

And Rhodri said, "I haven't got a bloody clue," and he laughed.

I don't like it when Rhodri laughs at me. Rhodri laughs at me a lot. Father says it is being friendly.

Then Father said, "I'll stick one of those Gobi Aloo Sag things in the oven for you, OK?"

This is because I like Indian food because it has a strong taste. But Gobi Aloo Sag is yellow, so I put red food coloring into it before I eat it. And I keep a little plastic bottle of this in my special food box.

And I said, "OK."

And Rhodri said, "So, it looks like Parky stitched them up, then?" But this was to Father, not to me.

And Father said, "Well, those circuit boards looked like they'd come out of the bloody ark."

And Rhodri said, "You going to tell them?"

And Father said, "What's the point? They're hardly going to take him to court, are they?"

And Rhodri said, "That'll be the day."

And Father said, "Best to let sleeping dogs lie, I reckon."

Then I went into the garden.

Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head.

And she said it was best to describe things that were interesting or different.

She also said that I should describe people in the story by mentioning one or two details about them so that people could make a picture of them in their head. Which is why I wrote about Mr. Jeavons's shoes with all the holes in them and the policeman who looked as if he had two mice in his nose and the thing Rhodri smelled of but I didn't know the name for.

So I decided to do a description of the garden. But the garden wasn't very interesting or different. It was just a garden, with grass and a shed and a clothesline. But the sky was interesting and different because usually skies look boring because they are all blue or all gray or all covered in one pattern of clouds and they don't look like they are hundreds of miles above your head. They look like someone might have painted them on a big roof. But this sky had lots of different types of clouds in it at different heights, so you could see how big it was and this made it look enormous.

Furthest away in the sky were lots of little white clouds which looked like fish scales or sand dunes which had a very regular pattern.

Then next furthest away and to the west were some big clouds which were colored slightly orange because it was nearly evening and the sun was going down.

Then closest to the ground was a huge cloud which was colored gray because it was a rain cloud. And it was a big pointy shape and it looked like this

And when I looked at it for a long time I could see it moving very slowly and it was like an alien spaceship hundreds of kilometers long, like in Dune or Blake's 7 or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, except that it wasn't made of solid material, it was made of droplets of condensed water vapor, which is what clouds are made of.

And it could have been an alien spaceship.

People think that alien spaceships would be solid and made of metal and have lights all over them and move slowly through the sky because that is how we would build a spaceship if we were able to build one that big. But aliens, if they exist, would probably be very different from us. They might look like big slugs, or be flat like reflections. Or they might be bigger than planets. Or they might not have bodies at all. They might just be information, like in a computer. And their spaceships might look like clouds, or be made up of unconnected objects like dust or leaves.

Then I listened to the sounds in the garden and I could hear a bird singing and I could hear traffic noise which was like the surf on a beach and I could hear someone playing music somewhere and children shouting. And in between these noises, if I listened very carefully and stood completely still, I could hear a tiny whining noise inside my ears and the air going in and out of my nose.

Then I sniffed the air to see if I could see what the air in the garden smelled like. But I couldn't smell anything. It smelled of nothing. And this was interesting, too.

Then I went inside and fed Toby.

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Mark Haddon -------- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time --------- Part 8

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-timeby Mark Haddon, first published in 2003.

《奇怪的夜狗事件》，【英】马克·哈顿著，2003年首次出版。