On 3 July 2000, the Washington newspaper The Columbian printed the Pick 4 Oregon Lottery results: 6, 8, 5, 5. Nothing surprising in that, we’ll agree. Except for the fact that the newspaper was printed before the lottery numbers were drawn. When the police went to investigate they were told that the newspaper’s computer had crashed just hours before it was due to be printed, so they’d had to recreate the paper in a rush. By accident they’d pasted in the winning numbers from the Virginia lottery, instead of from the preceding day’s Oregon lottery. And the improbability principle had come into play: the Virginia lottery’s four numbers just happened to be the ones which were due to come up in the Oregon lottery.
On 12 March 1951, a new character made his debut in the British comic
The Beano. His name was Dennis the Menace, a boy who got into all sorts of scrapes. A few hours later on 12 March 1951, on the other side of the Atlantic, a new syndicated newspaper comic strip appeared, also featuring Dennis the Menace. But these Dennis the Menaces were different. Their creators had no idea of each others’ work. The most extraordinary of coincidences, surely. But the improbability principle tells us that such things should be expected.
The King James Bible was published in the year that Shakespeare turned 46. Psalm 46 of this bible is
God is Our Refuge and Strength. The 46th word of this psalm is shake. The 46th word from the end is spear. A bizarre coincidence or something more? As explained in
The Improbability Principle, this is just the sort of thing we should expect to see: it is explained by the five laws constituting the improbability principle.
On 3 July 2000, the Washington newspaper The Columbian printed the Pick 4 Oregon Lottery results: 6, 8, 5, 5. Nothing surprising in that, we’ll agree. Except for the fact that the newspaper was printed before the lottery numbers were drawn. When the police went to investigate they were told that the newspaper’s computer had crashed just hours before it was due to be printed, so they’d had to recreate the paper in a rush. By accident they’d pasted in the winning numbers from the Virginia lottery, instead of from the preceding day’s Oregon lottery. And the improbability principle had come into play: the Virginia lottery’s four numbers just happened to be the ones which were due to come up in the Oregon lottery.
On 12 March 1951, a new character made his debut in the British comic
The Beano. His name was Dennis the Menace, a boy who got into all sorts of scrapes. A few hours later on 12 March 1951, on the other side of the Atlantic, a new syndicated newspaper comic strip appeared, also featuring Dennis the Menace. But these Dennis the Menaces were different. Their creators had no idea of each others’ work. The most extraordinary of coincidences, surely. But the improbability principle tells us that such things should be expected.