[ExI] for fun - statistical improbabilities

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Sat Sep 3 16:58:37 UTC 2016


I know that if you view things a certain way, nearly everything is a
combination of many things and is improbable.

But I am looking for things that have happened to you that were really
memorable for improbability, like mine:

We were sitting in the end zone in Birmingham, Alabama, watching the local
semipro team play Hawaii.  It was cold and raining and we were all under a
plastic sheet, rather miserable, and the home team hadn't done much.

Our team was at the other end of the field at the 5 yard line coming out
way.  For the first and only time I ever stood up and yelled something; I
said "What we need right now is a 95 yard touchdown pass."

It happened on the next play.  The whole end zone looked at me, and later
in the game called to me to call for another one.

 Not only do 95 yard plays happen very seldomly, how about just after I
called it?  I, who never stood up and said anything.

Have you had any type of highly improbable event happen to you where you
were involved in some way, not just a spectator?  (Yeah, kinda Reader's
Digest kind of thing.)

One more: as my wife and I were driving along a back road I saw a group of
vultures up ahead and slowed down as the group flew off to the right.  Only
one bird flew left but that was enough to bust my windshield, sending glass
all the way to the back window.

Not improbable?  One year later in another car my wife was driving along
the same road with me and a vulture hit her windshield in the same place.

The first time I learned not to put a used windshield in a car by myself.
Got it in, but it took all day and I never got the trim in.

Once, not improbable.  Twice?

bill w
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160903/50954997/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list