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My favorite mental visualization I came up with: imagine driving from New Jersey to Florida (substitute with a long drive you had). Mine was about 1,200 miles w

by yboris 3y ago

My favorite mental visualization I came up with: imagine driving from New Jersey to Florida (substitute with a long drive you had). Mine was about 1,200 miles which at 60 miles per hour is 20 hours. That's 72,000 seconds of mind-numbing driving. Now if during the entire, exhausting, 20 hours of driving, you press a button, and it falls within the "danger zone" that lasts 15 seconds, you lose. The above example is better when looking at lottery winning chances (worse than 1 in million) - where you can imagine having to throw a quarter out of the window, hoping for it to land within the proper 1 inch section of the road. I like this example because it gives you visceral feeling - allowing you to think in terms of lengths of road or length of time to compare various odds.

DeRock 3y ago
15 seconds danger zone / 72,000 seconds of driving = 1 in 4,800 Any reason you chose those numbers? Trying to understand the significance of those odds.
- slap_shot 3y ago
  Also curious! But even that does help to appreciate what a 1:4800 chance something is. I really like that frame of reference.
- yboris 3y ago
  So sorry -- I think I got distracted while writing (doing things around the house) and got the math wrong :'( I wanted something around 1:1million odds
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> imagine having to throw a quarter out of the window, hoping for it to land within the proper 1 inch section of the road This idea also helps to illustrate something which is intuitive to me but seemingly hard to explain. Sometimes when an event occurs people will exclaim, "Wow, what are the odds of that?!" and then if it turns out to be a seemingly unlikely event, then it becomes "wow, it's crazy that happened!". But it's really not. Using the pull-quote as an example, it's the difference between 1) throwing the quarter out the window and drawing a circle around where it lands and 2) drawing a circle on the ground, hoping to land the quarter in it when it's thrown. Of course the exact result in the first case was unlikely but nobody predicted it so it's uninteresting.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  It's because they think "that" is "meeting Dave from my previous job on holiday in Turin!" but it's actually "meeting one of the hundreds of acquaintances you've picked up over your life at any point when you're away from home at any time".

by yboris 3y ago

DeRock 3y ago

15 seconds danger zone / 72,000 seconds of driving = 1 in 4,800 Any reason you chose those numbers? Trying to understand the significance of those odds.

slap_shot 3y ago
Also curious! But even that does help to appreciate what a 1:4800 chance something is. I really like that frame of reference.
yboris 3y ago
So sorry -- I think I got distracted while writing (doing things around the house) and got the math wrong :'( I wanted something around 1:1million odds

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago

> imagine having to throw a quarter out of the window, hoping for it to land within the proper 1 inch section of the road This idea also helps to illustrate something which is intuitive to me but seemingly hard to explain. Sometimes when an event occurs people will exclaim, "Wow, what are the odds of that?!" and then if it turns out to be a seemingly unlikely event, then it becomes "wow, it's crazy that happened!". But it's really not. Using the pull-quote as an example, it's the difference between 1) throwing the quarter out the window and drawing a circle around where it lands and 2) drawing a circle on the ground, hoping to land the quarter in it when it's thrown. Of course the exact result in the first case was unlikely but nobody predicted it so it's uninteresting.

IshKebab 3y ago
It's because they think "that" is "meeting Dave from my previous job on holiday in Turin!" but it's actually "meeting one of the hundreds of acquaintances you've picked up over your life at any point when you're away from home at any time".