Collected Forsooths
Resource for Instructors
Chance News 1 – Chance News 87
These Forsooths are listed in chronological order, as submitted.
Link to individual Chance issues for citation details.
PERCENTS
Ambassador Newton: “Well, so far, six candidates out of 6,000 have been killed. That's .001 percent, and it's not at all clear that all of those cases involved the election.”
“Waiting time for foot surgery down by 500%.”
Ad for Peperami sausage: “Ingredients: Pork (108%), Pork Fat, Salt, Spices, Glucose, ....”
Company’s response to an inquiry: “The weight of the raw meat going into Peperami exceeds the weight of the end product because the recipe loses moisture, and therefore loses weight, during the fermentation, drying and smoking process.”
“Four million ... heard it. Ten percent remember it. One percent of those matter. One percent of those do something about it. That's still - he does the math - four people."
“The current rate of shrinkage [in 2005] they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060.”
“Alcohol is now 49% more affordable than it was in 1978.”
“The waitress coyly asked if they wanted change of the two twenties Kiley laid down on a thirty-two-dollar tab.
‘No, we’re fine.’
‘That’s a twenty percent tip, Mom.’
‘I’m feeling generous.’"
“The All England Club said yesterday the men's champion will receive $1.170 million and the women's winner $1.117 million -- a 4 percent increase for both in British currency.”
“Of the US Fortune 500 companies, 84 percent now have women on their boards: in the UK among the directors of companies in the FTSE 100, only 9 percent are women.”
Hint: If every FTSE 100 company had 11 board members, one of whom was female, what percent of these companies would have a female board member? What percent of all board members would be women? On the other hand, if 84% of F500 companies had a female board member, and every board had 20 members, what percent of all board members would be women?
“Thursday is the least productive day for finance workers, research has found. The start of the week is the best time with 18 per cent claiming they were most productive on a Monday.”
“The BBC remains just ahead of commercial radio in the UK, with a 67% share of all listeners compared with 64%.”
“The number of motorists willing to pay to travel on Britain's roads is falling, a survey out today reveals. More than one in four drivers were will to pay to use city centre roads in 2002, but that figure fell to just 36 per cent in 2005, a study for the RAC said.”
“The IOC Coordination Commission were told that 80 per cent of the land had already been acquired. London Mayor Ken Livingstone added that he was hoping that, by the time the public enquiry starts at the end of next month, four-fifths of the land would have been acquired.”
“NOAA's heating degree day forecast for December, January and February projects a 2 percent warmer winter than the 30 year average.”
”At St John's Wood station alone, the number of CCTV cameras has jumped from 20 to 57, an increase of 300 per cent.”
“Now 78% of female veterinary medicine students are women, almost a complete turn-around from the previous situation.”
“Mr. Romney started Bain Capital in 1984 with an initial fund of about $40 million. During the fourteen years he ran it, Bain Capital's investments reportedly earned an annual rate of return of over 100 percent, potentially turning an initial investment of $1 million dollars into more than $14 million by the time he left in 1998.”
“The car population went up 10 per cent over the 1997-2004 period, while daily car trips more than doubled, rising 23 percent.”
“The UK has seen an 8000% increase in fake internet banking scams in the past two years, the government's financial watchdog has warned .... The amount stolen is still relatively small but it is set to go up by 90% for the second year running.”
“We were eleven people obtaining those 30.000 millions. I want the 11% that corresponds to me.”
"[W]hile the majority of students who enter doctoral programs have the academic ability to complete the degree, on average only 50-60 percent of those who enter doctoral programs in the United States complete their degrees."
"The Times' leader of 28 February tells us that taking regular doses of certain vitamins 'can actually increase the risk of mortality by five per cent.' Since the ‘risk of mortality' is already 100 percent this is very worrying.”
“Brian Kelly, the editor of U.S. News, said more than 50 percent of the presidents, provosts and admission deans who were sent the annual survey of colleges’ reputations continued to fill it out. ‘We think the vast majority of presidents and academics are still supporting the survey,’ he said.”
“In terms of platform use trends among the respondents, 53% cited Windows as their primary technical computing platform, with Linux following closely at 51%.”
“Clearly, any product with a large user base is going to throw up some problems. Dell, for example, is shipping almost 40m PCs a year, so even if 95% of its users are happy, there could still be 6m or so with significant gripes.”
“Strokes have tripled in recent years among middle-aged women in the U.S., an alarming trend doctors blame on the obesity epidemic. Nearly 2-percent of women ages 35 to 54 reported suffering a stroke in the most recent federal health survey, from 1999 to 2004. Only about half a percent did in the previous survey, from 1988 to 1994.”
“USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population.”
A 2008 table showed a student:faculty ratio falling from 10:1 to 8:1 during the period Fall 1998 to Fall 2006, with a stated percent change of -25%.
“Roughly one-third of all eligible Americans, 64 million people, are not registered to vote. This percentage is even higher for African-Americans (30 percent) and Hispanics (40 percent).”
“87 percent of registered Georgia voters claim that they are going to participate in the runoff on December 2nd – this in a state where only 67 percent of registered voters turned out for the general election last Tuesday!”
"In the last five months, according to the Federal Reserve Board, the money supply in the United States has increased by 271 percent. It has almost tripled."
“France. The state statistics agency estimates that there are 3.8 million employed workers of foreign origin in France, representing 8.4 per cent of the total workforce of 25.4 million.”
“Duke Energy customers voiced their concerns on Thursday night about a planned 13.5 percent rate increase. Under the plan, people with an average monthly bill of 100 dollars a month would go up about 18 dollars.”
“The AMA is for Obama’s health plan, but only 29% of doctors belong to the AMA, so 71% are opposed to Obama’s health plan.”
“I must write again about the misleading adverts by GMPTE in the papers re the Congestion Charge. In their latest round of propaganda they state there will be a 10 per cent increase in bus services. With 10 councils in Greater Manchester this works out at a one percent increase per council. If Stockport’s bus companies run 200 buses in the morning peak, a one per cent increase will give two extra buses; is that what you want?”
"Two years ago the sausage roll was the number one snack, but is now in second place with 53% of sales."
"About 21% of American Children will see at least two live-in partners of their mothers by the time they're 15. And an additional 8% will see three or more."
Factoid: “12%: The percentage higher for searches of the word ‘guacamole’ in Wisconsin than in Pennsylvania.
“5%: The percentage higher for ‘baba ganoush’ searches in Pennsylvania than in Wisconsin.”
"To win 95 games, the [currently 0-6] Red Sox would have to win 61 percent of their remaining games." [True...but at the start of the season, they would have needed to win 59 percent of their remaining games!]
"[A] Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday found that Gingrich's favorable rating with GOP voters has dropped 27 points in the last month--from 52 percent to 38 percent."
Source 1: “[P]eople with gum disease have a 25 percent greater risk of heart disease than those with healthy gums.”
Source 2: “Researchers have found that people with periodontal disease are almost twice as likely to suffer from coronary artery disease as those without periodontal disease.”
“I think we’re in trouble. …. Look at the difference between the top 1 percent and the bottom 95.”
News alert (corrected 20 minutes later): "With just under 40 percent of the precincts reporting, Romney was leading with 78 percent of the vote, followed by Gingrich with 31 percent, Rick Santorum with 13 percent and Ron Paul with 7 percent."
"The New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) is probably one the most challenging. The NY Regents might be a little bit more challenging; Massachusetts, the MCAS, may also be. But [the NECAP] is in the top 2 or 3% of the most challenging state assessments."
PROBABILITY
General probability
“In theory, if you were to buy 50 tickets and your neighbor bought one, neither of you would have a better or worse chance of winning, We like to say it only takes one ticket to win."
“In addition, a person's odds of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese over a certain time interval. If the two people were mutual friends, the odds increased to 171 percent.”
“Probability -- the chance, or likelihood, of a certain/particular event occurring which can be expressed as a quantitative description, often ranging from 0 (rare event) to 1 (common event).”
“Up to 69 you have a one in six chance of getting cancer. After 70 it drops to one in three.”
Interviewer: “You told these men in Houston that a cure was, in a memorable phrase, 100% possible.”
Response: “Possible. Is that a guarantee?”
”One can't really say anything meaningful about probability without actual data.”
“It is Friday 13th today and though it is still only ten in the morning some awfully unlucky things have happened. I stubbed my toe; the cat caught a shrew and left it in the middle of the kitchen floor, which was unlucky for me because I almost stepped on it, and was even more unlucky for the shrew. It is a black cat too. Clear evidence that superstition works, even for small rodents. Or perhaps not. Yesterday I broke my fingernail, but it wasn’t Friday 13th then, so that wasn’t the fates being lined up against me, it was just an accident.”
"Is there one New Yorker in a hundred who knows what the morning line is? (It’s the track oddsmaker’s estimate of how the public will bet each horse in a race, expressed in probabilities like 3/1 or 7/2.)"
"Did you hear about the statistician who took a bomb with him whenever he got on an airplane? He did this as a safeguard against terrorism, reasoning that although the chance is low that a terrorist will bring a bomb onto a particular airplane, the chance is really low that two people will bring bombs onto the same plane."
Newspaper report: “Statistically, there's a 1 in 3,200 chance someone could be hit by one of the 26 objects...expected to crash into Earth's surface [in September].”
Headline: "NASA warns: Look out below! There's a 1 in 3,200 chance a piece of satellite will hit you.”
“Strangely, DNA experts are required to give probabilities for their evidence of matching; fingerprint expert[s] are forbidden to.”
Conditional probability
“Texas beats Ohio State in their opening game of the season [Saturday Sept 10 2002]. The sportscasters … observed that of the 14 teams who have previously played in the championship game [at the end of each season] 5 have suffered an earlier defeat. ‘Thus,’ they conclude, ‘Ohio State can still make it to the championship game, but their chances are now less than 50%.’"
“Thomas Bayes … was … the mathematician who formulated a probability theorem that can be used to solve problems that stymie conventional statistics. The crux of his theorem can be stated as follows: “The probability of any event is the ratio between the value at which an expectation depending on the happening of the event ought to be computed, and the value of the thing expected upon its happening.”
Weather
“Glasgow's odds [on a white Christmas] had come in at 8-11, while Aberdeen was at 5-6, meaning snow in both cities is considered almost certain.”
“[Researchers at the University of Washington] found people in Seattle didn't have much of a grasp for what the probability forecast [of rain] really means, but found the numbers helpful in planning their day.”
Unlikely events
“He tried his best--but in the end newborn Casey-James May missed out on a 48 million-to-one record by four minutes. His father Sean, grandfather Dered and great-grandfather Alistair were all born on the same date -- March 2. But Casey-James was delivered at 12.04 am on March 3 ....”
“The English language currently comprises roughly a million words. Discounting new words that are added every day, and those occasionally lost to posterity, the possibility of forming a three-word combination is therefore a million cubed, or a quadrillion--that's followed by 216 zeros.”
“Everybody trips on stairs at some time or other. It has been calculated that you are likely to miss a step once every 2,222 occasions you use stairs, suffer a minor accident once in every 63,000 uses, suffer a painful accident once in every 734,000, and need hospital attention once every 3,616,667 uses.”
Risk of dying
“In the US, those in the poorest households have nearly four times the risk of death of those in the richest.”
“You’re more likely to die in a fire in Strathclyde than anywhere else in the country.”
“HIV patients in low socio-economic classes are 89 per cent more likely to die than better-off people with the infection, claims a study of 2684 adults in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved."
“A ten-year study of men in Wales found that those who had sex twice or more a week were 50% less likely to have died than those who had it less than once a month.”
“Long-term, serious smokers have a 50% chance of dying.”
"The Times' leader of 28 February tells us that taking regular dose of certain vitamins 'can actually increase the risk of mortality by five per cent.' Since the 'risk of mortality' is already 100 percent this is very worrying.”
"People who were given a vitamin D supplement had a 7-per-cent lower risk of premature death than those who were not. …. It appears to be a life extender."
“Last week, a formatting error led to us inadvertently suggesting that there was a one in 1,019 chance of the world ending before this edition. That should have read, er, one in 10^1 – rather less likely. Sorry. Feel free to remove the crash helmet.”
“HIV patients in low socio-economic classes are 89 per cent more likely to die than better-off people with the infection, claims a study of 2684 adults in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (Nov).”
“Of the 29,000 people who may get cancer from CT scans done in 2007, about 50 percent will die, the researchers estimated.”
Fifty-fifty chances
“This summer there's about a 50 per cent probability that there will be above normal temperatures for much of Britain and Europe.”
“’I realize I don't have a chance, but nobody's got a chance. So the way I look at it, I have a 50-50 chance -- either I win it or someone else wins it,’ reasoned Barrie Green, 60, after buying a single ticket Monday afternoon ….”
“Europe's particle physics lab, CERN is losing ground rapidly in the race to discover the elusive Higgs boson, or 'God particle', its US rival claims ... the US Fermilab says the odds of its Tefatron accelerator detecting the famed particle first are now 50-50 at worst and up to 96%. at best.”
“It’s only fifty-fifty you’ll get him back if you pay it,” he said factually …. I tried to smile. “Two to one, not bad odds at the track.”
Perfect predictions
“Events like this send a shiver down the spine, but the math behind strange coincidences shows that most people simply have a poor grasp of statistics. The odds against meeting someone else at a party with your birthday are not 365 to 1. In a room with just 23 people, the chances that two of them will share the same birthday are better than even.”
“[Persi Diaconis] proved that it takes seven shuffles to perfectly randomize a pack of cards.”
“[T]here is a reasonable chance—not a certainty, mind you, but a reasonable chance—that the second half of 2009 will surprise us on the upside. …. [T]his seemingly high growth scenario … [would follow] directly from the arithmetic of hitting bottom. …. Eventually those huge negative numbers [associated with the decline of some GDP components] must turn into (at least) zeroes … [and] … almost certainly do better. …. None of these events are probabilities; they are all certainties. The only issue is timing, about which we can only guess.”
“Hey, how many people do you need to have in a room to guarantee the chance that at least two of them would have the same birthday?”
“I don’t know. Three hundred sixty-four.”
“Hah! Twenty-three. At least two out of every twenty-three people will have exactly the same birthday. Statistical odds. A lot of life is coincidence.”
Gambling
“Well, fairer in the sense that everyone's got an equal chance, but not fair in the sense that, well, it is literally a lottery.”
“We cannot increase the probability of winning a [lottery] prize as this is fixed. However, we can increase the amount we can expect to win if we do strike [it] lucky …. [C]hoosing popular combinations of numbers decreases the expected value of your ticket as you have a higher probability of having to share your prize if you win. …. [W]hen you select your numbers, you may as well try to choose a less popular combination that might increase your expected value. Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine what exactly the unpopular combinations are: there is not enough data.”
General quantitative reasoning
“The explanation rests in a mathematical formula created by the baseball analyst Bill James and introduced in the 1980 Baseball Abstract. James determined that the record of a baseball team could be approximated by taking the square of team runs scored and dividing it by the square of team runs scored plus the square of team runs allowed. Because of its similarity to the geometric method for determining the sum of the angles in a right triangle, he called it the Pythagorean theorem.”
“Q. How many punnets [a small light basket or other container for fruit or vegetables] of strawberries are eaten each day during the Wimbledon tournament? Is it (a) over 8,000, (b) over 9,000 or (c) over 10,000?”
“In 1996-8 when the number attending university was static, the participation of women was also static, but male participation fell.”
On the subject of congestion on the London Underground, “last year 976 million of us used the tube.”
“One primary school in East London has a catchment area of 110 metres.”
“Fewer names appear in the top 100 than ten years ago.”
“A Malaysian man was speechless when he received a $218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up within 10 days or face prosecution”
“To convert kilometres to miles multiply by .6214; kilometres/hour to miles/hour multiply by .6117.”
“Despite the ceaseless terrorist attacks on the country's infrastructure and particularly the oil industry, the value of the Iraqi dinar has continued to rise-in November, from D1,410 to the dollar to D1,480. That is obviously good for the vast majority of people whose pay comes in dinars.”
“The population of the USA has topped 300 million for the first time. It reached the figure sometime in October [2006]. It passed the 200 million mark in 1967. The U.S. census bureau, which reports the figure, calculates that, if current trends continue, it is expected to reach 400 billion by 2043.”
“Britain has been basking in the early onset of spring with temperatures almost twice as warm as the same time last year.”
“Phew! Twice as warm as Corfu … It's not often we put Corfu in the shade weatherwise, especially at this time of the year. But while the Greek holiday spot could only manage a paltry 8C [46F] yesterday, Britons basked in the sun as temperatures reached 16C [60F] yesterday.”
In a restroom in the Administration Building of the Arizona State Government complex there is a sign that says: “Everyday each person in this building uses an average of 15 gallons of our
precious water.”
“[Hanson is the l]argest aggregates producer in the world and 3rd largest in the USA.”
“Mr Davis was forced out after his division showed flat revenue growth.”
“Of Italy's 151 Series A players, 52 are non-white, with Inter fielding 19, Juventus 12, AC Milan 13, AS Roma 12 and Udinese 10. Messina has eight.”
"’We're off by a factor of a lot.’--Tony Miller, founder of Carol.com a company that hoped to sell about 200 healthcare policies a month but after eight months sold but a total of 160.”
“If you do not have so many players, what can you do? There are 95 registered Brazilian players in the Championship League, 94 French players and 45 English players. When you have twice as few players as other countries it is difficult.”
“Michael Ballack's heart must have skipped a beat for a microsecond.”
“The RSS [Royal Statistical Society] has global standing. Of its 7000 members, about one in four is drawn from over 50 countries.”
“Retail sales figures in the US on Wednesday were almost twice as bad as had been expected.”
“Their visual acuity is only fractionally – not geometrically – better than that of the common primates from which they were engineered.”
“When do you draw the line? When do you take action to avoid that logarithmic point where things take off exponentially?”
“With the [CT] state economy in the tank, this is the year of givebacks. .... [S]tate Rep. Terry Backer ... says the general public often is not aware that state legislators earn a base salary of 28,000 dollars per year for a part-time job with a pay rate that has been frozen for nine years.
On principle, Backer says he does not want to give up a day's pay to be in solidarity with the state employee unions. "I would rather take the 40 dollars and donate it to the food pantry in my town than do some baloney solidarity thing," Backer said.”
“This costs about a billion dollars. I'm not going to say how many zeros after it, but it's a lot.”
"Connecticut has the 2nd highest incidence of breast cancer in the U.S. Connecticut. DON'T settle for second place!"
Newspaper report: “Irene's bill in Vermont could top half-billion dollars.”
Headline: “COST: Irene repairs could top 500,000 dollars."