Typically, statistically impossible events
are often called miracles; for instance,
when three classmates meet
by coincidence in a different country decades
after leaving school, may be considered
miraculous. However, a colossal
number of events happen every moment
on earth; thus extremely unlikely coincidences
also happen every moment;
Events that are considered impossible
are therefore not impossible at all —
they are just rare, depending on the number
of individual events;
It was British mathematician &
Cambridge University
Professor John Edensor Littlewood
who suggested that individuals should statistically
expect one-in-a-million events i.e., "miracles"
to happen to them at the rate
of about one per month.
By Littlewood's
definition, seemingly miraculous events
are in actuality commonplace;
The law, framed by Littlewood,
was published
in his 1986 collection, A Mathematician's Miscellany;
seeking among
other things to debunk
one element
of supposed supernatural
phenomenology
& is related to the more general law
of truly large numbers,
which states
that with a sample size as large
as the totality of reality,
any outrageous thing is likely to happen
Sep 1, 2018
Sep 1, 2018 at 2:06 PM UTC
Typically, statistically impossible events
are often called miracles; for instance,
when three classmates meet
by coincidence in a different country decades
after leaving school, may be considered
miraculous. However, a colossal
number of events happen every moment
on earth; thus extremely unlikely coincidences
also happen every moment;
Events that are considered impossible
are therefore not impossible at all —
they are just rare, depending on the number
of individual events;
It was British mathematician &
Cambridge University
Professor John Edensor Littlewood
who suggested that individuals should statistically
expect one-in-a-million events i.e., "miracles"
to happen to them at the rate
of about one per month.
By Littlewood's
definition, seemingly miraculous events
are in actuality commonplace;
The law, framed by Littlewood,
was published
in his 1986 collection, A Mathematician's Miscellany;
seeking among
other things to debunk
one element
of supposed supernatural
phenomenology
& is related to the more general law
of truly large numbers,
which states
that with a sample size as large
as the totality of reality,
any outrageous thing is likely to happen
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