The Law of Truly Large Numbers

The Law of Truly Large Numbers
With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen. The point is that truly rare events, say events that occur only once in a million [as the mathematician Littlewood (1953) required for an event to be surprising] are bound to be plentiful in a population of 250 million people. If a coincidence occurs to one person in a million each day, then we expect 250 occurrences a day and close to 100,000 such occurrences a year.

Going from a year to a lifetime and from the population of the United States to that of the world (5 billion at this writing), we can be absolutely sure that we will see incredibly remarkable events. When such events occur, they are often noted and recorded. If they happen to us or someone we know, it is hard to escape that spooky feeling.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/methods-for-studying-coincidences/


05 July 2011

MLB LEADERBOARD - BATTING AVERAGE ON BALLS IN PLAY

ANAHEIM, CA - MAY 09: Center fielder Peter Bo...Image by Getty Images via @daylife

 
Name PA HR R SB BABIP AVG SLG
Hunter Pence 354 10 39 4 0.390 0.325 0.502
Chase Headley 328 2 32 8 0.388 0.306 0.405
Adrian Gonzalez 381 16 59 1 0.387 0.348 0.586
Andre Ethier 351 7 41 0 0.379 0.317 0.458
Jose Reyes 380 3 65 30 0.375 0.354 0.529
Joey Votto 382 12 55 6 0.373 0.318 0.503
Brett Wallace 298 4 33 1 0.372 0.29 0.413
Howie Kendrick 306 8 41 8 0.364 0.307 0.475
Matt Kemp 359 22 54 22 0.360 0.324 0.611
Bobby Abreu 350 3 32 13 0.358 0.285 0.376
Alex Avila 270 10 29 3 0.358 0.297 0.528
Michael Bourn 375 1 57 35 0.358 0.290 0.402
Peter Bourjos 303 3 33 11 0.357 0.266 0.392
Drew Stubbs 377 11 55 23 0.349 0.253 0.400
Seth Smith 278 8 38 3 0.349 0.302 0.520
Michael Young 363 7 38 4 0.348 0.318 0.475
Alex Gordon 369 10 47 5 0.348 0.298 0.486
Todd Helton 293 9 36 0 0.344 0.319 0.488
Jacoby Ellsbury 373 9 58 27 0.344 0.310 0.464
Victor Martinez 285 6 37 1 0.343 0.328 0.479
Emilio Bonifacio 287 1 31 11 0.342 0.270 0.369
Starlin Castro 377 2 46 10 0.342 0.307 0.427
Austin Jackson 369 4 41 15 0.341 0.246 0.359
Carlos Gonzalez 355 13 55 14 0.340 0.296 0.497
Matt Joyce 287 11 44 4 0.340 0.298 0.522
Ryan Braun 351 16 57 19 0.340 0.320 0.559
Michael Morse 275 15 35 2 0.339 0.299 0.538
Jamey Carroll 297 0 35 5 0.338 0.294 0.358
Alex Rodriguez 331 13 51 4 0.336 0.295 0.493
Brennan Boesch 331 12 57 4 0.336 0.309 0.503
Justin Upton 370 13 50 14 0.336 0.296 0.503
Jhonny Peralta 304 14 39 0 0.335 0.314 0.542
Cameron Maybin 271 5 36 12 0.333 0.260 0.397
Brian McCann 311 14 32 2 0.332 0.316 0.520
Freddie Freeman 326 11 37 2 0.332 0.272 0.448

Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted by at

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow...It's funny. I will have a look later. Thank you for sharing.

February 2, 2012 at 8:52 PM
Anonymous said...

Great post !

February 11, 2012 at 4:19 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)