Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"[...] There are over 300 million people in the United States, and about 6.8 billion in the world. This means that something that has a million-to-one odds of occurring in any given day is likely to happen to 300 people a day just in the U.S., and 6,800 people a day worldwide. So it's not exactly earth shattering that it happens. To the person it happens to, it certainly seems extraordinary, but since it's likely to happen to someone -- in fact, 6,800 someones -- it's not a particularly significant occurrence.

"Reading into events often stems from a lack of understanding of the law of large numbers, which is basically that given a large enough sample size, even improbable events are likely to occur. Given enough opportunity for a particular event to happen, it would be weird if it didn't."

-- Melanie of Teen Skepchick, 2012-01-23