Quotes About Probability

All of this is really impossible, in the way that it is really impossible that monkeys should by chance type out a copy of Hamlet.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere possibility of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

It was just so very surprising that the good-looking, worried man who had just offered her a cup of tea, and was right now working at his computer down the hallway, and who would come running if she called him, and who loved her with all of his strange heart, would in all probability one day kill her.

Statistics: A group of numbers looking for a fight.

I get Head and Tail like a quarterin that order.

In baseball, you can do something poorly and still get credit. A pitcher could throw a bad ball, the batter hit a screaming line drive, and an outfielder make a fantastic diving catch. Yet, when you look at historical databases, 80% of the time when a ball is struck with that trajectory and velocity, it is a hit.

And as we should all know by now, anytime you predict failure you have an excellent chance of being right.

In 1986 Eccles proposed that the probability of neurotransmitter release depended on quantum mechanical processes, which can be influenced by the intervention of the mind. This, Eccles said, provided a basis for the action of a free will.

very, very rarely—the statistics say you're more likely to be killed by lightning

Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero.

On the one hand, a central part of this theory is the introduction of probability measures which describe what associations and deductions we are likely to make.

may exist mathematical laws of thought in principle derivable from physic/chemistry. Such laws would have to be probabilistic.

Whatever is true is true, but not all truths are necessary truths. It is true that adding two pebbles to two pebbles makes four pebbles; but adding two drops of water to two drops can make one pool (Piaget, 1967d, p. 582). What this means is that the action of adding actual objects together can have alternative outcomes; the sum of adding two and two can be other than four – that is a real possibility, and no contradiction arises from this.

Statisticians do it with confidence, frequency and variation

Your best chance to get a Royal Flush in a casino is in the bathroom.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

Luck is not as random as you think. Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it.

if you watch trillions of things, you will often see one-in-a-million coincidences.

Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both.

A 99% Value-at-Risk calculation does not evaluate what happens in the last one percent... This is like an airbag that works all the time, except when you have a car accident.

If I get a parking ticket, there is always a parallel universe where I didn't. On the other hand, there is yet another universe where my car was stolen.