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The law of credulity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Robert A.J. Matthews
Robert A.J. Matthews*
Affiliation:
The Sunday Telegraph, London
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Extract

Coincidences are a source of amusement and occasional unease in our lives. They often appear to defy the laws of probability – even to demand a supernatural “explanation”. Probability theory reveals the root cause of this disparity between expectation and reality. As I shall show, it stems from the fact that our intuitive estimate of the probability of a coincidence occuring becomes increasingly inaccurate the more “outlandish” the coincidence seems to be.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 77 , Issue 480 , November 1993 , pp. 327 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1993

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