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We regularly hear of amazing coincidences – people winning the lottery twice, or getting a phone call from a long-lost friend just when you were thinking about them. Is this telepathy? Is there a greater power at work when someone survives seven lightning strikes?
There can be terrible consequences from the misunderstanding of coincidence.
This lecture was recorded by Sarah Hart on 5th March 2024 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London
Sarah is Gresham Professor of Geometry.
She is also Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/maths-coincidence
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The chances of his being hit by lightning are known: the probability is exactly 100%.
You're welcome.
Next question.
Wondeful lecture, thank you Sarah!
Can I say it? Awkwardly? *Randomly, we only know between 30-137 people.
We tend to blur the rest,
People don't know 1000 people.
I loved seeing Chris Lintott talk 💕
Check it, how many people, people generally know between 30-137 people.
Humans are not built to remember more people than that.
Six degrees of separation can happen in social networks (not random graphs) precisely because you don’t pick someone randomly but on purpose.
About the upcoming 14th May lecture "How to prove 1 = 0" — I'd do it by insidiously dividing by zero. Alternatively, I'd reorder or regroup the terms of a series that doesn't converge absolutely. Am I right? Am I RIGHT???
Speaking of coincidences—the other day, I was playing cards with some friends. We took turns shuffling the deck. When I shuffled the deck, it turned out that I had ordered the cards into a very rare sequence. That sequence that had an a priori probability of less than one in 80 unvigintillion — that's 8 followed by 67 zeros. That probability is about the same as tossing a 6-sided die 87 times and getting a 6 every single time. And I had done it in just one attempt!
That's not all. Over the course of the evening, I must have shuffled the deck some 20 times. Each time—believe it or not—the sequence of cards—though different each time—had that same extremely low probability of existing! And yet, I did that 20 times without fail. 🤯
Wait till I tell you about the time I played darts in a pub …
6:50 why mostly men struck by lightning? Outdoors job, fixing something made of metal… Ladders… Got out of the car to do X, while thunderstorm…
Very cool.