Reply to: Math's Puzzle : Odds

[Board Game Geek]

Surely THIS is the best way of finding out?

Now that's clever as well ! Good one !

[Board Game Geek]

The "average joe" thinks in terms of lotteries. So you could say it's close to the chance of winning the lottery every week (Saturdays only!) for two months.

I like that one, thank you !

[Bagpuss]

It's all nonsense. You're either successful, or your not. So that's probability 0.5, 50% etc.

That's a joke right?

[Money Money Money]

Surely THIS is the best way of finding out?

[NotAllThere]

It's all nonsense. You're either successful, or your not. So that's probability 0.5, 50% etc.

[thunderlizard]

The "average joe" thinks in terms of lotteries. So you could say it's close to the chance of winning the lottery every week (Saturdays only!) for two months.

[Drewster]

and how pissed would you be if after opening all those doors and finally finding a suitable room filled with the right number of people and tapping all those shoulders they all said they were john until the very last one?

I wonder what the odds of that happening are..........................

[DS23]

and how pissed would you be if after opening all those doors and finally finding a suitable room filled with the right number of people and tapping all those shoulders they all said they were john until the very last one?

[DaveB]

If you want a laymans example:

You'd have a better chance of walking out into the sahara desert and finding a specific grain of sand simply by picking one a random.

[Bagpuss]

If most people knew a little bit about probabilty, Camelot would be bancrupt and Noel's box or no box wouldn't be on

[DS23]

....If 300 people were in a masssive room, and only 65 of those people were called "John" :

What would be the odds of me walking in to that room.....

surely the odds are even greater. don't you have to calculate how many doors there are first?

[dude69]

Thank you Threaded !

I best get Excel fired up and write a formula.

I'll probably do it like this.

65/300 = j1
64/299 = j2
63/298 = j3
drag down

total = j1xj2xj3xetc

Cheers !

no need for that, just =combin(300,65) for the number of combinations or =1/combin(300,65) for the probability.

[Bunk]

Put it this way, the number of atoms in the universe is thought to be between 4x10^79 and 10^81, so 6x10^66 is getting towards that kind of scale.

[Drewster]

Can anyone suggest how to put those odds in to perspective for the layperson to understand ?

For the "average" Layperson.... "It ain't gonna happen"

Hows that?

[Board Game Geek]

Well in Literature terms, it's up there with the chances of an infinite number of monkeys producing the combined works of William Shakespeare.

Yes, but can you even begin to imagine the smell ?

And the noise, dear God, the noise !!!!

And where the hell do you get a warehouse big enough for this enterprise ?

Plus the crippling costs in bananas, furniture, paper, typing equipment, ink.

I don't think that idea's going to pass Dragon's Den somehow.

And for that reason, I'm out.