Wednesday, July 25, 2012

What About Those One in a Million Events

The odds of things are fascinating. The odds of getting struck by lightening are like one in 250,000. The odds of getting hit twice, those get really weird and I know of one person who was struck four times. Those odds are so large that we cannot even begin to calculate them. Now, If you have one such occasion it still falls within the realm of possibility. It is possible to have one even that exceeds all probabilities, it is called an outlier. What happens when more and more outliers occur? That is when you have to question your basic assumptions. A nice article to read.

Yahoo News - The Lookout - Colorado shooting victim’s brain condition helped her survive, pastor says

Now here is the question. If I can show that there are more outliers than there should be using any calculation, would you consider that the outliers may actually require you to reconsider your basic beliefs and if so, by what criteria might you reconsider it.