halpmaine

Fair points, however, unless I'm mistaken, mathematics arrived at the possibility of multiverse; all things equal math is objective, if you will. The same cannot be said for Religion. -AH

---------------------------------------------------------------- Agreed except I looked to the adjacent vehicle. But I appreciate what you are saying - and the other replies. However, my description and question thereof pertains to the admitted relatively unscientific approach to arriving at a ball-park estimate. Clearly too many variables exist to realistically duplicate this event in vivo. That said, generally speaking - and commensurate with Iggy's post (thx Iggy) - when discussing this with my daughter (and while still considering her genius-level IQ) wouldn't a pretty quick and dirty method indeed be to multiply some general terms (variables) together to arrive at some kind of odds ratio? Those of you with inquisitve first graders will likely follow me on this - the goal is more about the process...the desire to continue a cool dialogue and consider some basic math/science with my daughter on the way to school than to try and arrive at a definitive, provable answer! Thanks All! -halpmaine

Hello. Forgive my lay review here but this is the background to my question: My daughter and I were headed to school one morning earlier in the year. She was reading 101 Dalmations. While stopped at an intersection - I looked over to the vehicle next to me and surprise, surprise, you guessed it - there in the back seat was a DALMATION. This morning on the way to school we got to talking about that very event...that coincidence. It then occurred to me while trying to give my daughter a ball-park notion of the (high) odds of having those two events occurring again at random - that I ought to run the question of determining general probability of a seemingly random event by some math gurus. All disclaimers aside and all things equal, is there a means to estimate the probability of such an event occurring without having much hard data? For example, while very loose on the data, I told my daughter perhaps one could consider the odds of her reading that particular book (e.g. say 1/104), the odds of seeing that particular breed of dog in the car beside us (e.g. estimate that, say, 1/20 cars will have a dog and of those 1/100 would be a dalmation) - and so forth for time of day, route driven and so forth with all the important variables. Thus, if you multiply all relevant terms (i.e. 1/10,000 * 1/20 * x * y * z) you would come up with some kind of guesstimate pertaining to the odds of her reading a book about a particular breed of dog while simultaneously seeing that same dog in a vehicle next to us - at random. I told her it was probably in the millons-to-billion. Is this the general manner in which the probability for otherwise random events are determined? Again, my apologies for the likely enigmatic presentation of this ? but clearly I am not a math whiz! Thanks for your help. -halpmaine