“A poor understanding of probability leads many people to put forward supernatural explanation for events that are far more common than they think.
This video shows how probability theory is sufficient to explain even seemingly remarkable coincidences.”
(Thanks ’1984′ who left this in a blog comment)
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Spooky! I was only just thinking about watching a video on coincidences the other day!
Very wise words from a very wise man. Don’t you just love MATHEMATICS
Nice vid.
Historically, it made sense to overestimate the chances of two events being connected in some way, after all, if you assume that rustle in the grass is the wind and it turns out to be a tiger, your genes won’t get passed on. I wonder whether the weighting of that equation has changed and now it is evolutionarily more beneficial to be skeptical? After all, if you spend your money on tarrot readings and crystals and I spend mine on my children’s education, there’s likely to be a small evolutionary advantage given to my offspring over yours.
….what’s the first number they pull out of a hat when demonstrating examples of ill observed coincidences? Twenty three! Hah!
D’ you know the whole twenty three thing was popularised by Robert Anton Wilson as a way of teaching yourself exactly this very fact, that one picks the coincidences you desire, and add the significance to it that makes it ‘special’? By ‘attuning’ your self to a particular random number (cos someone else picked it for you (originally William S. Burroughs), and then told you it had special powers of synchronicity), you notice that there are many ‘amazing’ things that happen in conjunction with the numbers appearance. Apply this to the maya we live in, and it becomes obvious how we attach meaning, form, to the void.
That’s what the 23 things really about, folks…
Weird that in all groups (larger than 23 most often) I’ve been in at, no one ever had the same birthday as me, so it is a theorethical system that does not seem to work out in reality at all.
I do share the same date of birth with Joran vd Sloot … in fact, he is the first person I know by face who is born on the same date. I’m born in another year though. In my year of birth we do not date chicks which end up dead sometime during that date .. Leo’s are predators but you should not let that sink in that deep inside of yourself .. being a leo.
No Raoul, it’s not weird. That’s not how probability works. Sometimes it might only take a group of 2 to have a common birthday. Other times it might take a group of 200. The odds shift in favour of it happening at 23, not to guarantee it happening at 23.
And think of all the times you’ve been in groups where you’re not in a position to assess what peoples’ birthdays are – most social and work groupings, for example. Unless you wander round buses, say, or theatre auditoria, quizzing the audience on their birth dates – and if you do, well you have worse problems than a shaky grasp of probability theory.
Two coincidences I was involved in look like confirmation bias on hindsight.
In the first, a policeman I never met in my life greeted me by my surname at the door of a local venue one Christmas when I was 16 (I hadn’t introduced myself to him).
But given his job description who’s to say he didn’t have my name and photo on file somewhere or know someone who knew me?
I also remember thinking in a dream that it would be a shame if a certain singer died before her time only to have my spooky death “premonition” confirmed on the morning radio news.
What I hadn’t taken into account was that my radio alarm was up and running 15 minutes before I was and could have put the suggestion smack into the middle of my dream simply by interrupting my semi-concious thought pattern.
just because theres been more then 23 people in your parties, it doesnt mean that someone will have the same birthday, just that the odds are higher that someone will.
Raoul
you have misunderstood what the video says. It is not saying that if you are in a group of 23 people it is more likely than not that someone will have the same birthday as YOU. It is saying in a group of 23 people it is more likely than not that 2 people within the group will share the same birthday,
With probability you have to be very clear what question is being considered. An example I use to emphasise this point is to say to someone “I bet you £100 I can roll a six with a dice”. Of course the point is what do I mean by this? If I meant that I could roll a six in a single roll of a dice it would be a good bet for that person to take. However, if I meant that I could roll a six eventually, with an indefinite number of rolls, it would be a terrible bet.
Raoul wrote:
Weird that in all groups (larger than 23 most often) I’ve been in at, no one ever had the same birthday as me.
—
That’s not weird. It’s unlikely that anyone in that small group will have the same birthday as *you*. However there are a far greater number of pairs within the group, and the chance of any pair sharing a birthday is much greater.
eg, imagine a group of 4 people: 1, 2, 3 and 4. You are number 1. The chance of you sharing a birthday is just 3 out of 365 (assuming a uniform prior for birthdates). However, the chance of any pair in the group sharing a birthday is higher, as there are other pairs (2-3, 2-4 and 3-4 in the example). These combinatorial problems scale much faster than most people expect.
Great video! I was once in a lecture about probability and the lecturer asked us whether we thought it was likely that two people in the room shared the same birthday. He was shocked when the entire class were certain… he had failed to notice the identical twins sat in the second row!
Anyway, great video and as a risk engineer who spends all day trying to explain to people about probability, risk and low frequency high impact events, I do wish people would stop and think about this stuff a little more clearly.
in honor of st. RAW, i would like to pick the coincidence of my winning the lottery tonite…
I’m terrible about probability and I wish I had the time to do some basic work just to know the maths around it. Then again, I’m not one who is impressed by coincidence. I really liked the other contents in the dream that were listed. That’s how weird my
dreams are too.
Reminds me of the great quote from Richard Feynman:
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”
@Raoul – no you missed the point of the birthday thing. It’s not finding someone that has the same birthday as YOU, it’s finding 2 people in the room that share the same birthday as each other. You may not share the same birthday as Fred, nor do you share the same birthday with Carl or with Frank, but Frank and Carl might share the same brithday, or Fred and Carl or Fred and Frank etc. etc. When you have 23 people in a room it’s more likely than not that 2 people in the room will share the same birthday as each other but to us it seems highly improbable.
Great video, but am I the only one who finds the guys voice boring?
Now if Derren was to put the same info across, that would much more entertaining!
Oh and Raoul you’ve got it wrong! – just in case you hadn’t figured that out from the other comments!
Have Fun!
Nice anecdote Helen. My favourite? Statistics lecturer to class; ‘What is the likelihood that the next person to walk into this room with have MORE THAN the statistical average number of legs?’ Too quickly we decided it was unlikely.’Wrong; it is virtually certain.’ came the reply. ‘The statistical average is fractionally less than two as a result of missing limbs and no-one having more than two so the chances are that a two-legged person will walk in and they wwill have therefore more than the average.’
I ‘d like to think of myself of someone with a rational mind and this discussion of probability has come up on another thread I commented on.. Did you know there was a movie about 23? Do you think media etc is connected to making us believe something we shouldn’t. Is it part of one word order i ask maybe? There were many docs destroyed about history by the church and politicians which leaves a mystery and a mystery which the majority of us still care to find out about. You could count probability all day long but let’s be honest.. when you are sitting at the traffic lights and the turn to green and you go you don’t stop there thinking about probabilities of who will jump the red light you go by instinct trusting no sod will hit you don’t you?
I have had hairs go up on my neck when I sensed someone behind me and yes you could call it paranoia but then I froze imagining a man with a knife then something inside my mind told me to run… so then my body just sprang into action and I ran faster than anyone could ~(yes adrenaline I know). I was 14 and wanting to escape from home but when I did I came across this feeling I explained yet I saw nothing or heard nothing. When I got home my mother thought it was her I said no a man followed me. Ok I could take into account probability I was emotionally detached, in sane whatever .. and the chances of someone being there in a remote area were slim. However the next day on the news a girl got attacked same place that I was standing the previous night and a warning went out to everyone.
I don’t know if anyone has replied in between as these comments have to be looked at. However that feelilng some people get on the back of their necks when something ain’t right .. it happens for some not others – it’s a sixth sense but nobody can explain here. Also dreams have been explained but not in great detail really. There are also crop circles (as in the genuine kind) which can’t be explained and … premonitions which may I add I have had three or four. One Paddington train disaster where it was so real I could do a step by step story about it another about a parachute not working and a skydiver dying (hence being diabetic I have never skydived) and others involving World trade disaster. I am a skeptic but also so much has happened that I cannot ignore mystery yet wonder why.
*face palm* @ rachel
guess you didn’t get the point of the video then?… in a world with population over 6 billion.. it is statistically likely that a number of people will experience some bizarre and higly unlikely -but probable- coincidences in their life time …. say someone having a dream about a plane crashing into a large building and then the next day waddya know… the word trade centre has been struck… it is just nature for your mind to look for connections… especially in such an emortionally charged event….peope can’t accept a simple explantion so they look for something deeper and waddya know… “conspiracies” are formed. even though not specifcally defined in your dream, you assume the building that you dreamt of MUST have been the world trade centre,
not just a building in general or any of the other hundreds of similarly physiqued buildings that exist in your memory
and that it MUST have been a plane, not a missile or a bird or any other possible inanimate object…
so therefore you conclude that it was too much of a coincedence to have had this dream and then the next day have a similar real life occurance happen… so it MUST have been a premonition…
not just a general dream about something crashing into a building…. sure.. this must be a really scary and exciting experience to have… but you get so emotionally caught up in it that you forget to look at the bigger picture….
over 6 billion people in the world…….it is statistically likely that SOMEONE in the world that night would have a dream about a building being crashed into….. no? …
Great video. I always try to think rationally when something peculiar happens but it is not always easy! I’ve started to think about probability in every day life, I think it helps greatly in understanding everything.
More videos like that please!