Joseph Wu
Developer, musician, photographer, teacher, thinker
On the Incorrect Framing of Astronomical Probabilities
The odds that you took a dump at 7:30:12 am is 86400 to 1. A rare dump indeed!How many times have you read some infographic or BuzzFeed list that tries to calculate the odds that you exist? Perhaps it got into all of the billions of starts in the milky way, the number of possible planets, how many possible couplings of men and women, and finally down to which sperm won the race to the egg that made you. The motivation to show you such such astronomical probabilities about everyday occurrences in life can vary from proving the existence of God, to simply trying to impress…Joseph Wu3 min read