Why Improbable Things Really Aren't

Posted by Unknown on Monday February 17, 2014 @08:06PM from the learn-to-count dept.

First time accepted submitter sixoh1 writes "Scientific American has an excellent summary of a new book 'The Improbabilty Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day' by David J. Hand. The summary offers a quick way to relate statistical math (something that's really hard to intuit) to our daily experiences with unlikely events. The simple equations here make it easier to understand that improbable things really are not so improbable, which Hand call the 'Improbability Principle:' 'How can a huge number of opportunities occur without people realizing they are there? The law of combinations, a related strand of the Improbability Principle, points the way. It says: the number of combinations of interacting elements increases exponentially with the number of elements. The 'birthday problem' is a well-known example. Now if only we could harness this to make an infinite improbability drive!"

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Law of large numbers by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-17 20:25 · Score: 0, Informative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers
This is old news mister Slashdot.
1. Re:Law of large numbers by Razalhague · 2014-02-17 22:27 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Law of truly large numbers is the applicable law here, but the mistake is understandable.
Re:intuit by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-17 21:14 · Score: 2, Informative

Intuit has been in use as a verb for more than two hundred years. Your personal shortcomings do not and should not dictate what is acceptable in a Slashdot summary unless you happen to be the one writing said summary.