6 Insane True Statistics That Laugh In The Face Of Logic
Probability rules our entire lives, but our brains absolutely suck at calculating it. The gambling industry thrives off of this fact -- tell someone they only have a 1-100,000,000 chance of winning the lottery, and they'll say, "somebody's got to win!"
We can't blame them -- there are all sorts of ways that probability works like freaking black magic. Just try to wrap your mind around the fact that ...
#6. When You Shuffle A Deck Of Cards, You're Creating A Sequence That Has Never Existed Before
36clicks/iStock/Getty Images
The Scenario:
Let's say you're the dealer at a casual Friday night poker game. Let's also say, for the sake of argument, that you're an expert shuffler, and not one of those people who just clumsily swirls cards around like an infant. You expertly riffle the cards, toss them hand to hand, juggle them, throw them into a hat, etc., until eventually you're confident that you've fully randomized the cards.
Alexey Pyrkov/iStock/Getty Images
But be sure to placate the one asshole who insists on cutting the deck.
What are the chances that the configuration of the deck you now hold is the same as one that you've shuffled before on a previous poker night? One chance in 1,000? One in 10,000? We mean, there's only 52 cards, so how many can it really be?
The Reality:
You should feel special, because it's almost certain that the configuration of the deck you hold in your hand has never been held by any human being in the history of mankind, on this Earth, or on any one of its many parallel universes. You currently hold in your hand something that will never again be seen, from now until the end of time itself.
It's true that 52 cards doesn't seem like a lot. But if you try to count the number of possible combinations of those cards, you better have a few evenings free. The total number of statistical combinations of a 52-card deck is what's known as "52 factorial," sometimes referred to as "52!" or "52 shriek." Written out in full, that number is:
80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000
Sergey Nivens/iStock/Getty Images
Fine, matholes. Maybe 52! is a little easier to write.
That's a giant-ass number. To put into into perspective, it's been calculated that "if every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people living on them, and each of these people has a trillion packs of cards and somehow they manage to make unique shuffles 1,000 times per second, and they'd been doing that since the Big Bang, they'd only just now be starting to repeat shuffles."
If that hurts your brain, think of it this way: There are only 52 cards, but there are only half that many letters in the English alphabet. Think about all of the different books that have been written just by mixing those same letters around. There has to be like, dozens.
Dave King/Dorling Kindersley RF/Getty Images
But only a couple that really matter.
#5. Pi Can Be Calculated By Randomly Dropping A Bunch Of Paper Clips
Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
The Scenario:
Let's play a quick game. All it takes is a piece of paper, a pencil, and a handful of paper clips (or needles, or nails, anything like that).
Draw two parallel lines on the paper, approximately two paper clip lengths apart. Now go ahead and drop a handful of paper clips on the space between the lines. It doesn't matter how many paper clips you use, but the more the better, so feel free to go hog wild.
Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images
And if you can tell how many are on the paper just by looking, stop reading and get your ass to Vegas.
Take the total number of paper clips, multiply it by two, then divide that number by the number of needles that are touching one of the lines. So if you drop 20 paper clips, 13 of them are laying across one of the lines, you'd divide 40 by 13. The number you wind up with will be close to pi ... and if you up the number of paper clips, it will get closer and closer.
Like, sorcery close.
Astrid860/iStock/Getty Images
Which led to the lesser-known Salem nerd trials of colonial times.
The Reality:
Yeah, pi is one of those mysterious things that just keeps popping up in the universe, like Q from Star Trek. In this case, assuming that the position of the paper clips you dropped is completely random, all of their angles and locations will tend to even out. In much the same way that coin flips will tend to even out toward an equal number of heads and tails, even though each individual flip result is random.
Like coin flips, the result gets more accurate the more you do it, as sheer persistence irons out statistical aberrations. While your coin flips get closer to 50-50 the more times you flip, your paper clips get closer to pi the more times you drop. If you don't have the time or the paper clips to do it yourself, there are online simulations that will do it for you, because of course there are.
Viktor_Gladkov/iStock/Getty Images
"Hey Mom ... yeah, they have me doing a really important project at work."
The exercise is so accurate that it's one of the methods supercomputers use to calculate pi to the billions of decimal places, which is a surprise, considering we really thought supercomputers would do actual math instead of throwing virtual office supplies all over the place.
#4. You Can Rig A Game Of Coin Flips Just By Going Second
Shikhar Bhattarai/iStock/Getty Images
The Scenario:
Let's say that someone challenges you to a game of coin toss. The rules are simple -- each of you predicts a sequence of three tosses, either heads or tails. Then you toss the coin until one of your sequences comes up. If his sequence comes up first, you give him $20. If yours comes up first, he gives you $20 (note: You have time to do this because you are both unemployed).
Purestock/Purestock/Getty Images
Oh, you need welfare so bad but you still have a coin for flipping?!
If you're both playing fair, it seems like this is about as close to a 50-50 shot at winning as you can get, right? It's basically just a guessing game -- there's no way this eccentric stranger could be tricking you.
The Reality:
Even if there's no trick coin, mirrors, or wires involved, and the chances of each flip are exactly 50-50, you can still rig a game of coin toss. That eccentric stranger has as much as an 87 percent chance of beating you, and the secret is to go second.
milla1974/iStock/Getty Images
Uh, just be careful which eccentric stranger you do this with.
Say the person who makes the first call chooses heads, heads, and tails. The trick for the second player is to remember two steps:
1. Your first call should be the opposite of their second call. In this case, tails.
2. Your second two calls should be the same as their first two calls. In this case, heads, heads.
Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Go ahead and make a flow chart if you need to. We'll wait.
If you follow these rules, your odds of winning will always be higher, sometimes marginally and sometimes massively. If you don't believe us, try it yourself and see how often your second series of guesses comes before your first.
This is what's known as a "nontransitive game." That is, every choice you can make is either better than or worse than any other possible choice. It's basically the same thing as a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, only in this case, by going first, you're telling your opponent whether you choose rock, paper, or scissors before he makes his choice. So don't go first. By following the aforementioned rules, you can almost always fix it so that your choice winds up being a counter pick to his -- the rock to his scissors. Unless of course his sequence comes up on the first three flips, in which case he may be a witch.
Astrid860/iStock/Getty Images
Which is good news for our Salem readers who don't have money to pay off the bet!
