The Lottery: A tax on the statistically-challenged
a little experiment you can try to "get a handle on" what a 1 in 13,983,816 chance really means.
1. Get a piece of rope or string, that's 39 feet long.
2. In a wide open area, arrange the rope or string in a circle, end to end, the best you can.
3. Get a single grain of sand or dirt (use tweezers!) and place it anywhere you wish inside the circle.
4. Get a second grain of sand. Close your eyes, and "disorient" yourself as to where the grain of sand is that you placed inside of the circle (have someone spin you around or something!).
5. While you're inside the circle, drop the second grain of sand from 1 foot up.
6. Your chances of hitting the first grain of sand with the second is roughly equal to the odds of "1 in 13,983,816."
7. If the rope's length mentioned in #1 is a little unreasonable, for every foot above the circle that you drop the second grain of sand, you can reduce the length of the string by the same amount. For example, if you dropped the second grain of sand from a ladder 10 feet up, you'd need a length of string that is 10 times shorter than the one in #1, or a 39/10 = 3.85236 foot long piece of string.
a little experiment you can try to "get a handle on" what a 1 in 13,983,816 chance really means.
1. Get a piece of rope or string, that's 39 feet long.
2. In a wide open area, arrange the rope or string in a circle, end to end, the best you can.
3. Get a single grain of sand or dirt (use tweezers!) and place it anywhere you wish inside the circle.
4. Get a second grain of sand. Close your eyes, and "disorient" yourself as to where the grain of sand is that you placed inside of the circle (have someone spin you around or something!).
5. While you're inside the circle, drop the second grain of sand from 1 foot up.
6. Your chances of hitting the first grain of sand with the second is roughly equal to the odds of "1 in 13,983,816."
7. If the rope's length mentioned in #1 is a little unreasonable, for every foot above the circle that you drop the second grain of sand, you can reduce the length of the string by the same amount. For example, if you dropped the second grain of sand from a ladder 10 feet up, you'd need a length of string that is 10 times shorter than the one in #1, or a 39/10 = 3.85236 foot long piece of string.
