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What Are the Odds That a Given Cow Will Make It to the Super Bowl?
- alexgartrell 17y ago66200000 / 17420000 * 20 = 76 This article is only true if every cow hide's resultant balls are sent to the exact same place. The superbowl could very well choose 76 different cowhide donors. 76 / 66200000 = 1 / 871 052.6 If that were the case, the odds would be (go figure) about 20x better of being chosen. I bet the true probability is somewhere in between
- fnid2 17y agoAlso not all cows slaughtered provide leather. Usually leather cows are kept in pins without barbed wire to provide better quality leather. That would narrow it down even more.
- bretpiatt 17y agoIs it just me or did they miscalculate the odds here by trying to tell a story? It seems the only things that matter are: # of cows slaughtered annually: 66.2M / 1.99 = 33,266,331.7 # of footballs made per cow: 20 # of footballs used in the Super Bowl: 76 # of cows required to make the SB balls: 76 / 20 = 3.8 Odds a randomly slaughtered cow becomes a SB football = 33,266,331.7 / 3.8 = 1 in 8,754,297.82 What am I missing?
- alexgartrell 17y agoThey're talking about the probability of any cow being a super bowl football. Not of any slaughtered cow. The fact that half of call cows get slaughtered is pretty irrelevant.
- CoreDumpling 17y agoRelated: "... Thus there is a 1.8% chance that none of the molecules you are (still) holding in your lungs came from Caesar's last breath. And there is a 98.2% chance that at least one of the molecules in your lungs came from Caesar's last breath." --John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy (1988) [1] [1] http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001392.html http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001392.htm...