Quotes About Probability

I despise the Lottery. There's less chance of you becoming a millionaire than there is of getting hit on the head by a passing asteroid.

Why, given their advanced mathematical ideas, did the Arabs not proceed to probability theory and risk management? The answer, I believe, has to do with their view of life. Who determines our future: the fates, the gods, or ourselves? The idea of risk management emerges only when people believe that they are to some degree free agents. Like the Greeks and the early Christians, the fatalistic Muslims were not yet ready to take the leap.

but between reject and not—reject. You can decide that the probability that you are wrong is so small that you should not reject the hypothesis. You can decide that the probability that you are wrong is so large that you should reject the hypothesis. But with any probability short of zero that you are wrong—certainty rather than uncertainty—you cannot accept a hypothesis.

But in a cause-and-effect world, if we know the causes we can predict the effects. So "what is chance for the ignorant is not chance for the scientist. Chance is only the measure of our ignorance.

T]he "Law Of Frequency Of Error". . . reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob . . . the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand . . . an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.13

But therein lies the logician's trap: past data from real life constitute a sequence of events rather than a set of independent observations, which is what the laws of probability demand.

The art of war lies in calculating the odds very closely to begin with, and then in adding exactly, almost mathematically, the factor of chance. Chance

It's hard to say how long he'll be out but he's 100 per cent doubtful for the weekend, that's for sure.

The wavefunction tells us where we might potentially find an electron when we look; but what we do find in any given experiment is random, and we can't meaningfully say why we find it here rather than there.

Wavefunction collapse is a generator of knowledge: it is not so much a process that gives us the answers, but is the process by which answers are created. The outcome of that process can't, in general, be predicted with certainty, but quantum mechanics gives us a method for calculating the probabilities of particular outcomes. That's all we can ask for.

T]he wavefunction of the electron in [a] box can penetrate into the walls. If the walls aren't too thick, the wavefunction can actually extend right through them, so that it still has a non-zero value on the outside. What this tells you is that there is a small chance – equal to the amplitude of the wavefunction squared in that part of space – that if you make a measurement of where the electron is, you might find it within the wall, or even outside the wall.

T]he probabilistic nature of the Schrödinger equation, which predicts only the likelihood of different experimental outcomes, leaves it offering no reason why one specific outcome is observed instead of another. In effect, it says that quantum events (the radioactive decay of an atom, say) happen for no reason.

Amount of luck in tournament determines amount of regression to the mean from one year to the next.

slow regression is more often seen in activities dominated by skill, while faster regression is more associated with chance.

although we have a substantial body of evidence to support this conclusion, and we hold it with a high degree of confidence, it remains possible, albeit extremely improbable, that new evidence or arguments may compel us to revise our view of this matter.

Assemble forecasters. Ask them large numbers of questions with precise time frames and unambiguous language. Require that forecasts be expressed using numerical probability scales. And wait for

explore the similarities and differences between your views and those of others—and pay special attention to prediction markets and other Methods of extracting wisdom from crowds. Synthesize all these different views into a single vision as acute as that of a dragonfly. Finally, express your judgment as precisely as you can, using a finely grained scale of probability.

Most things in life involve skill and luck, in varying proportions. The mix may be almost all luck and a little skill, or almost all skill and a little luck, or it could be one of a thousand other possible variations. That complexity makes it hard to figure out what to chalk up to skill and what to

Can you imagine how much of existence would be impossible if people didn't believe in a certain amount of luck in the face of all evidence to the contrary? The true essence of human life is delusion. That's what we've got in here. And it's been that way ever since the first Roman soldier blew on a handful of dice. It's simple human nature to believe your luck is going to turn.

Most things may never happen: this one will.

The difference between heavyweights and amateurs, she said, is that the heavyweights know the difference between a 60?40 bet and a 40?60 bet.

produce forecast-wrecking

Natural as such thinking may be, it is problematic. Lay out the tangled chain of reasoning in a straight line and you see this: "The probability that I would meet the love of my life was tiny. But it happened. So it was meant to be. Therefore the probability that it would happen was 100%." This is beyond dubious. It's incoherent. Logic and psycho-logic are in tension.

Uncertainty is real," Byers writes. "It is the dream of total certainty