Quotes About Probability

Players talk about pot odds all the time, especially when they try to justify a call that they made. Whenever I hear this line of reasoning, though, I can't help but wonder if they properly thought through the consequences of their call.

There is always some chance of recession in any year. But the evidence suggests that expansions don't die of old age.

Expansions do not die of old age. The probability of recession in the following year is the same for a three-year-old expansion as it is for a five- or six-year-old expansion.

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

There are some who, if you propose to examine into anything, immediately set you down as an unbeliever in that thing. A man who wants to find out what the Bible really means, is, by those who do not believe in it a tenth part as much as he, set down as an unbeliever in the Bible; whereas it is a proof of the very strongest probability to the contrary.

It has never happened!" cannot be construed to mean, "It can never happen!"—as well say, "Because I have never broken my leg, my leg is unbreakable," or "Because I've never died, I am immortal.

Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can't predict what people will laugh at.

I found maths very easy, but I still enjoyed discovering things. You have to have the necessary information. For example, what's the difference between the mean and the median? Probability fascinated me. You have to think very carefully about things, which is the way my mind works anyway.

Is it 10 years, 20, 50 before we reach that tipping point where climate change becomes irreversible? Nobody can know. There's clearly a probability distribution. We need to ensure this planet, and we need to do it quickly.

The average claw machine is only programmed to give the claw full strength every 20 tries.

California State University Professor Mike Orkin points out that if a person drives ten miles to buy a ticket, he or she is about sixteen times more likely to get killed in a car crash on the way than to win the jackpot. Wait a minute, you say; that may be for one ticket, but they're buying a lot of tickets—surely, that improves the odds. It does, but Orkin notes that a person who buys fifty tickets a week will win the jackpot on average about once every 30,000 years.

Don't play Quantum Russian Roulette.

Upon measurement, the wave function collapses. However spread out it may have been pre-measurement, afterward it is concentrated on the result we obtained.

The public totally discounts low-probability high-consequence events. The individual says, it's not going to be this plane, this bus, this time.

Baseball is a game of averages, but over a short period of time, to have a little luck going is not a bad thing.

It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.

It's not the good that die young, it's the lucky.

Rzeczywisto?? prze?ciga wszelk? fantazj?, bo fantazja musi si? jednak liczy? z jakim? prawdopodobie?stwem.

May intelligent, bookish ladies sometimes be reformed? he asked her. She thought about it. I suppose it may be within the bounds of possibility, she said, even if not of probability.

becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to.

Cuando has eliminado lo imposible, lo que queda, por muy improbable que parezca, tiene que ser la verdad.

E je une mê vecje massime chê che, quant che si à scartât l'impussibil, ce che al reste, ancje se improbabil, e scuen jessi la veretât.

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.

No human actions are truly random