I've been dipping into John Haigh's excellent book on probability. Click on the image to buy it through the High Stakes gambling bookshop (I thought it made a change from Amazon) although I couldn't possibly condone spending any longer than necessary there.It includes a new favourite statistic of all time. My old favourite (and how sad to have a favourite statistic you're possibly, or even probably, thinking) is that two thirds of accidents are caused by sober drivers.
My new favourite is that 99% of Belgians have more legs than average. Fantastic.
I think you can read the whole book online here if you want. Try the link to see if it works.
1 comment:
I've blogged this before, but it's sort of relevant.
I covered a maths class once who were doing simple probability along the lines of if you roll a dice, whats the probability you'd get a 6.
I had one student who kept insisting the answer was 1 in 2. Eventually, having failed miserably to explain, I asked her how she got 1 in 2 as her answer.
'Easy' she said. 'You either get a 6 or you don't'
With odds like that, I'm for the Lotto on Saturday
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