Infinite Odds

[Magnum]

This is something which has been really bugging me. Ok, you hear people say the odds of a certain thing happening are next to infinite, like the odds of me winning the lottery for the next five weeks running are infinite (I can't even win once!) Sooooo, when you think about it, how does the most basic things in life happen, when you think of the odds of it happening, like for example, when it rains, what are the odds of each rain drop falling exactly where it falls, if you go for a walk what are the odds that you are going to place your steps in the exact places you place them etc etc. The odds of that happening, really are infinite, yet it happens every single day. Ok, I am shutting up now 'coz my head is spinning.

[j2buttonsw]

The probability that you win the lottery is not infinite, just very unlikely: something like 14,000,000 to 1. What is the probability that you win the lottery the week after you have won it? 14,000,000 to 1 again. Similarly, if you throw a coin 10 times in a row and they all turn out heads, what is the probability that the 11th will be a head? 1 in 2 like the first 10 throws.

[answerbok]

next to infinite is Aleph null and why your feet go there is because they do. there's more than just self involved, fate, little things like that, why your heart's still drumming. so don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.. just an idea, but i know what you mean, Magnum it used to bother me, chaos and entropy too but it's all math and so is God :-)
http://www.aleph-null.com/whya0.html and the lottery? tax on the gullible or divine intervention for winners? well that's math too. maybe i should get a ticket; but not 2 tickets, that would be silly. Don't do anything silly.

[roomby]

why would two tickets be silly? is it because the odds are the same for each one and so, you don't improve your chances by buying two?

[Gef]

If you buy two tickets with a different combination of numbers then you are halving the odds.

[mikecabs]

Magnum, I feel your pain, and I think I have an answer. Instead of trying to work out the huge odds of these thing happenning as they do, turn it around and ask what the odds are that if rain falls out of the sky, that none of it falls on the ground. And if you take a step what are the odds that your foot will miss the floor. The inevitable will happen.

[Andromeda]

Quick answer to stop your head spinning. The odds aren't infinite. If they were it wouldn't happen. Instead they are huge. Huge, but measurable (by something - not necessarily you). Infinity is a concept that is often misunderstood.

[jenstar]

You ask what are the odds of each rain drop falling exactly where it falls. The answer is: it is certain that each rain drop falls exactly where it falls. And that's not as silly an answer as it may sound - the point is that while there may be lots of different ways it can fall, it does *have* to fall in *some* way or other, and once its happened, the chance of it having happened in that way becomes 1, or certainty. If you flip a coin, there is a 50% chance of it coming down heads, and a 50% chance of it coming down tails. But what you mustn't do is confuse the likelihood of each outcome with the likelihood of ANY outcome, i.e. the fact that it has a 50/50 chance of coming down heads doesn't mean it only has a 50/50 chance of coming down at all. Likewise, a raindrop may only have a one-in-a-million chance of hitting the ground in the exact position that it does, but that doesn't mean that there is only a one-in-a-million chance of it happening, only that there are a million WAYS in which it *could* happen.

[jhart999]

Can I just confuse people even more with something that reading this made me remember? Good: At any given time in New York there are at least two people with the same number of hairs on their head. Think about it: despite the fact that the number of hairs on someone's head is such an arbitary thing, it's possible because the number of hairs on someone's head shouldn't exceed roughly 7 million (and that's someone with dense hair); whereas, there are roughly 8 million people in New York at any one time. So because there are more people than possible numbers of hairs on someone's head it stands to reason that at least two people share the exact same hair count on their head. I thought some people might be interested by this as an aside.

[answerbok]

Gef, if you buy 2 tickets your odds go from 1 in 14,000,000 to 2 in 14,000,000 Not half! - so it's 'sensible' to buy one ticket, cos you're in with 1 chance in 14m and silly to buy two; cos 2 chances in 14million is not noticeably better than one chance. :-)

[mikewith]

answerbok - if you buy two tickets it doubles your chance of winning. That's "noticeably better", surely?