It is meant to read 350°F. The point is that the temperature is too high to be a useful domestic thermostat. I have changed the sentence to make this clear (and added a ° symbol ). The passage now reads:
Scholten gives the evocative example of a thermostat which steers the temperature of a room to 350°F with a probability close to certainty. The entropy of the final distribution over room temperatures would be very low, so in this sense the regulator is still ‘good’, even though the temperature it achieves is too high for it to be useful as a domestic thermostat.
(Edit: I’ve just realised that 35°F would also be inappropriate for a domestic thermostat by virtue of being too cold so either works for the purpose of the example. Scholten does use 350, so I’ve stuck with that. Sorry, I’m unfamiliar with Fahrenheit!)
35°F, surely?
It is meant to read 350°F. The point is that the temperature is too high to be a useful domestic thermostat. I have changed the sentence to make this clear (and added a ° symbol ). The passage now reads:
(Edit: I’ve just realised that 35°F would also be inappropriate for a domestic thermostat by virtue of being too cold so either works for the purpose of the example. Scholten does use 350, so I’ve stuck with that. Sorry, I’m unfamiliar with Fahrenheit!)