George Duke wrote on Sat, Aug 22, 2009 06:33 PM UTC:
Of odds, calculations, some mis-applications as well as other
irrelevancies that should be organized better:
(1) A normal human lifetime may be around 2.5 billion seconds. So you say
your odds of dying are 1/2500000000 in some sense. It has to be explained
better, and your eventual death is (practically: well it hasn't happened
yet) certain.
(2)They like to say there are more possible game scores than atoms, but
that is true of any sizable CV.
(3) Aristotle quotes Agathon that ''it is probable that the improbable
will sometimes happen.''
(4) Newton was born the same year Galileo died, and Bobby Fischer was born
under the sign of Pisces, the Fish. ''Fish'' means bad chess player. In
Fischer-Spassky Iceland 1972, Fischer blundered the first game and said,
''I'm a fish. I played like a fish.''
(5) Call out cards in a random 52-card deck without looking. 1/52 chance to be right each time, but go through all 52 and 2/3 is probability that one happens to be called exactly right.
(6) 50 trillion solar nutrinos pass through human body every second, but they have to have the right angle to make it through Earth to the other side before another second elapses, and it so depends on the time of day. If night, they still go through you but not then to the other side, that they already visited.
(7) Astronomical Sun/Moon 400/400 Size/Distance. Pure coincidence unless someone comes up with some explanation. Volcanoes, gamma rays. Hey shoots happen.