It really is silly. > One was the rate at which provinces claimed by China (like Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet) have eventually been absorbed, peacefully or by f

It really is silly. > One was the rate at which provinces claimed by China (like Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet) have eventually been absorbed, peacefully or by force; another was how often control of Taiwan has changed over the last few hundred years (twice; once when Japan took over from the Qing Empire in 1895 and once when the Chinese Nationalists did in 1945); the third base rate used Laplace’s rule. Laplace’s rule states that the probability of something that hasn’t happened before happening is 1 divided by N+2, where N is the number of times it hasn’t happened in the past. So the odds of the People’s Republic of China invading Taiwan this year is 1 divided by 75 (the number of years since 1949 when this has not happened) plus 2, or 1/77, or 1.3 percent. The first rate is maybe since 1949 (or maybe 1841 or 1557?), the second is over an arbitrary number of centuries, and the last is also since 1949, but could be calculated wildly differently if rephrased as "years mainland Chinese government has control over Taiwan" and extended back to the Qing dynasty. Somehow these are compatible to do an average of. Then "He nudged up to 12 percent." Not that estimated percent chances can ever really be "wrong".