Slashdot Mirror
Conspiracies And Probability
guttentag writes "Sunday's New York Times Magazine is running a feature that looks at the rumored conspiracy that allegedly killed nearly a dozen bioterror and germ warfare researchers during a four month period following the U.S. anthrax scare. "What are the odds," people ask, despite the fact that a "one-in-a-million miracle" will statistically occur 280 times a day in the U.S. These strange things happen all the time, but we hype them because they provide the spice in literature and the comfort of comprehension."
Yes, but take those very same monkeys, take away their typewriters. Given only 5 months, these monkeys can and will write the legislation for the USA for the given year.
And if they do a poor job, you can always vote for another monkey next November.
Or said another way, given very large numbers of N, and incredible lengths of time, Congress might actually write something worth reading....