Comment #5

mikeintexas — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 14:50:36 GMT

They're also called "politicians". Abraham Lincoln had a very good quote: "Most of what you read on the Internet is not true.

Comment #4

music* — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 11:01:10 GMT

Lots of humor in those quotes. Prime Minister Winston Churchill probably learned his craft from Prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. So called experts and their made up stat's. Be aware of frauds.

Comment #3

mikeintexas — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 10:54:28 GMT

Or would it be that 78.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

Comment #2

mikeintexas — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 02:06:21 GMT

Would that be the quote about the three kinds of lies? I've read that's attributed to Mark Twain, but it actually originated from the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli

Comment #1

music* — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 01:30:30 GMT

You do know what they say about statistics? Thanks for the amusing blog.

Original Blog Entry: What Are The Odds?

mikeintexas — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 00:31:46 GMT

I was reading an article online with the local classic rock station on and the radio jock starting talking about odds of things happening. I wasn't paying much attention, but he mentioned the odds of winning the lottery, then went on with other long odds of things happening to you. It wasn't until the last bit of information he mentioned that my ears perked up.

I did not remember all the numbers, but I went to see the odds of playing the lottery. From Wonderopolis:

In a lottery in which you pick 6 numbers from a possible pool of 49 numbers, your chances of winning the jackpot (correctly choosing all 6 numbers drawn) are 1 in 13,983,816. That's 1 shot in almost 14 million.

If you were to buy one lottery ticket each week in such a scenario, you could expect to win once every 269,000 years.

That's pretty good odds compared to the Mega Millions jackpot. According to Wikipedia the odds of hitting a jackpot on that game are 302,575,350 to 1.

Of course, if you want a little better odds than that, then you can play Powerball, which according to Wiki has odds of only 1 in 292,201,338 of winning the big prize.

I don't remember all the categories - but the last couple - the radio jock brought up, but northjersey.com claims that you have a much better chance of being killed by a vending machine 112 million to one - than winning either the Powerball or Mega Millions. They also say it's a much better bet that an asteroid will hit the Earth, 1-75,000. Also, the article says the odds of finding a four-leaf clover are 1-10,000 and being hit by lightning 1 in 15,300.

I wonder what the odds are of being hit by lightning AND an asteroid while looking for a four-leaf clover?

Never mind.

Anyway, the radio jock went on with some odds I found distressing and unlike the other millions to one odds, I remembered these. He said the odds of a man cheating on his wife were 1 in 5. That upset me for some reason, even though I knew deep down that was fairly accurate. I'm just proud that when I was married, I was one of the four faithful guys.

The other stat that bothered me was in the same category, namely that 1 in 7.5 women cheated on their husbands. I'm certain that my ex was one of those 6.5 faithful women.

Which brings me to something about that last stat; just exactly how does one cheat with .5 of a person, half a woman? Would that be the top half? Just guessing, but I'd say it would have to be the bottom half to really fall under the definition of cheating, but that's just my twisted mind. What's even more twisted is the thought of the woman being half a woman vertically...split right down the middle

I guess that could be the case, more than the top/bottom scenarios. After all, the odds of a woman having conjoined twins is 1-200,000....and if they had been separated, and a man cheated with one of the twins, that technically would be the point 5 of a woman, right?

I guess if a guy cheated with BOTH of the still-joined twins, that would skew the statistics, right? Would you count that as one or TWO of that 7.5 figure?

What's really twisted is me thinking about stuff like this. Trust me, the odds of me doing THAT is pretty much a sure thing.

... [ More ]