What is the probability that the next person you meet has an
above average number of arms?
Let's take a number of people, say 2,000 in a small town. Now let's say one
of these people only has one arm.
So the total number of arms is 3,999.
The average number of arms per person will be:
| number of arms |
= |
3,999 |
= |
1.9995 |
|
|
| number of people |
2,000 |
We can now see that 1,999 of the people in our small town will have
an above average number of arms. They have 2 arms and the average
is 1.9995.
If we meet one person at random from our small town, 1999 out of
2000 will have an above average number of arms.
The probability of meeting one of these people is 1,999 out of 2,000.
This can be expressed as:
If the probability was 1.0 it would be certain that the next person
we meet would have an above average number of arms. It is not 1.0
but it is close. So we can say that it is
Very Likely that the
next person we meet will have an above average number of arms.
Not quite what you expected, hey?
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