The Paradox of Random Testing

 

Have you ever heard of the "unannounced test paradox"?

Here's a simple explanation.

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If the teacher says, "I'm going to give an unannounced test somewhere on a weekday next week," and the test is to be given on Friday, then the teacher knows by the end of class on Thursday that the test will be given on Friday, and therefore it cannot be given on Friday. If I say "I'll do it on Thursday," then I know that I can't do it on Friday because of the aforementioned reason, so I'll know at the end of class on Wednesday that it will be done on Thursday. Therefore, it can't be done on Thursday. In the same way, if the test is to be held on Wednesday, it will be known at the end of class on Tuesday, so it cannot be held on Wednesday either, and in the end, "the teacher cannot give an unannounced test.

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This is what I mean.

This is also known as the "death row paradox", replacing the "test" part with "execution".

The reason why I brought up such a paradox story is that my PC stopped booting today. It was said that the windows startup file was corrupted, and I was forced to spend a lot of effort to recover it (I'm still in the process).

I wrote about how my PC went bad about half a year ago, but in the end, I was able to use it somehow, so I just kept on using it, thinking that it would probably break soon. In short, I was in the same situation as the student who was told by the teacher that he would have a surprise test in the "paradox of surprise tests": "It will break soon, but I don't know when.

But today, I was hit as I was. It broke down at a timing that I had not expected at all. It's strange. If the paradox of unannounced tests is true, it should never break, but it's strange.

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