“The Odds Are A Billion To One”: 30 Statistically Unlikely Things That Happened To People
Interview With Expert
We like rare things. Like finding an unusual-looking pebble at the beach or owning a limited edition Beatles album. The same goes for events. Strange and rare experiences make for a good story. But what makes them rare and unusual? Their mathematical improbability, usually. Something that happens so rarely that it makes even the biggest skeptic say, "Wow."
One Redditor was curious to know whether people had such experiences. So they went on to ask people, "What is the lowest probability event you have personally witnessed?" The thread got almost 4k answers, and people had plenty of experiences to share. From witnessing lottery wins to the unlikely coincidences of meeting people you're somehow connected to, people shared all sorts of things.
We here at Bored Panda wanted to know more about why statistically improbable things fascinate us so much. So we reached out to Christopher T. Franck, an associate professor in the Department of Statistics at Virginia Tech. He was kind enough to explain what qualifies as a statistically improbable event and why they surprise us so much.
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Childhood best friend moved away when we were 10 years old never to be seen or spoken to again until we ran into each other in Iraq 11 years later while both deployed.
The easiest definition of a low-probability event would be an experience that is not likely to happen. Getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery are unlikely to happen, so the majority of reasonable people would agree that it's highly improbable.
But how do we know which things are probable and which are not? "As humans, it is often extremely difficult for us to know how probable events are," Associate Professor of Statistics Chris Franck says.
"How likely is it that my favorite sports team will win the championship next season? What is the chance that someone I care about will recover from a serious disease? Do I have a large enough investment portfolio to comfortably retire in the next five years? Is it going to rain this weekend? We yearn to know how probable these events are."
At 13 years of age, my father and I used to go to dirt track races at the Dixie Speedway in Georgia. We always cheered for car 28. At 21 years of age, I start dating this girl in North Carolina, somehow get on that subject, as she was from GA. "My father used to race there... number 28."
Saw a lady walk by one of those banks of slot machines where you can win a car--the kind where the car is actually on the casino floor. She stopped, considered for a moment, then turned around and put a buck in. Spins. Jackpot. Alarms go off. Won the car.
She freaks out. Like, freaks the f**k out. Screaming, crying, yelling, barking, you name it. Almost faints a time or two. Her girlfriends finally get her calmed down, and they're waiting for casino staff to come over and do their thing.
But this lady, she just won a car. So she's restless. And to give herself something to do, she walks over to another bank of slot machines. A bank of slot machines where you can win an entirely different car. So she puts a buck in. Spins. Jackpot. Alarms go off. Won another car.
And at that point the casino probably stepped in and called it either cheating or a faulty machine.
Franck says that statisticians define the probability of events based on the existing data for similar events. "When your doctor tells you there is a 90% chance that your tumor is benign, this has been established in the medical literature because doctors and biostatisticians have studied many cases that are similar to yours, and in those cases, 90% of the tumors were benign. There is quite a bit more subtlety that goes into it, but that is the basic idea."
So, for us to determine whether a thing has low probability or high probability, there have to be two conditions, Franck says. The first is a carefully analyzed set of data about similar events. The second is that the event has to be uncommon or nonexistent in the collected data.
"Executing a large-scale data analysis is not quite as simple as I make it sound in the above explanation," Franck adds. "We typically require a team of statistical data analysts and also relevant domain experts, such as medical doctors, meteorologists, etc. Conducting research is expensive, and it frequently takes years to finish projects."
I was stumbling around the tent area of a festival in Portugal late at night and drunk and entered a tent I thought was mine. It was not. But it did belong to a guy I had dated in high school in Australia about 10 years earlier.
Driving across state in an old Oldsmobile and it breaks down. Water pipe burst in the middle of nowhere. Guy in a RV rolls up looks at the car. Goes back to the RV and comes back with the exact pipe we need. It even says Oldsmobile on the pipe. He installed it and wouldn’t accept any payment. He just asked us to help someone if we saw someone in need.
My great grandpa was in WW1. He got stuck in no man's land for a few days wounded, and eventually got to a hospital, and spent 6 months there. Got to be good buddies with the guy in the bed next to him, but eventually both left.
Decades later, he's at a party, gets to talking to another guy his age about the war. Turns out to be the same guy he was next to in the hospital.
There is also the element of our reactions to such events. Why do we get so surprised, shocked even, when we see a lady in a casino win two cars in a row? Franck thinks two elements make us so surprised.
One of them is purely the fact that something rare just happened, something we 'didn't think should happen.' "But rarity alone doesn't really capture the imagination," Franck observes. I do not think it would make headlines if I played a one-in-a-billion game of solitaire."
Lost a ring shovelling snow one winter when I took my gloves off.
That autumn, raking leaves while chatting to a friend I said ‘wouldn’t it be neat if I found my ring?’ That exact moment I looked down and found my ring.
“Man, wouldn’t it be neat if I found my lost ring while reading this?” Nope, didn’t work. Worth a try, though.
Was walking with a girl and don’t remember the exact context but said something like “the craziest thing would be if that street light went out right now” and pointed at a light and then it did actually go out for some reason. She literally screamed and ran away, it was bizarre, weirdest coincidence I’ve ever seen.
I got a brain injury in an accident and the doctor told me after doing all the scans and stuff that he’d never seen an injury so bad that didn’t end in paralyzation or death. The fact I walked out of the hospital a week later was a medical miracle apparently. So got that going for me.
I had this happen…. Twice. Second one happened on the anniversary of the day I walked out of the hospital from the first.
It's also the gravity of the event itself. "Actually getting struck by lightning is impossible to comprehend for most of us. We imagine that winning the lottery would permanently and positively change our [lives]. The idea of a chance encounter with an old friend abroad might invoke daydreams about missed opportunities or hint at a desire to correct old regrets."
"So what we are really reacting to is the combined effects of a rare event that is also incredible. We simply ignore extremely rare events that are uninteresting, such as my game of solitaire," Franck explains.
I was in the back of the house, and looked out the back window, saw it was raining and yelled to my brother he should bring his laundry in.
He was in the living room at the front of the house, looked out the window, blue sky and sun, no rain. He said I was crazy, I told him to come look.
We went out the front door, and it was raining in the back yard. A line that stopped right at the peak of the roof as far left and right as you could see.
I've ridden through lines like that, you can see them coming down the road. It's weird.
I was in a restaurant in Spain the night they were holding the nation's largest lottery. The staff won the lottery that night. I spent the night in a restaurant of celebration and champagne.
The largest lottery is played on 22nd December in the morning. Big enough that all mayor TV stations broadcast it live for four or five hours straight. OP was probably on a Thursday or Friday night when they play a different lottery called Primitiva or Euro millions, that can actually give bigger prizes. The joy is contagious even if you don't get anything.
At Disneyland in front of the Castle my wife and I asked a person to take our photo. At the same time another couple 2-3 feet to our side asked another person to take their photo as well. We looked over at each other and it was our next door neighbors from home 5 states away. Neither of us knew either of us were going on vacation at the same time to the same location at the same time.
"We should remember that many things happen every day," the Associate Professor of Statistics tells Bored Panda. "Tons of people are admitted to hospitals under dire circumstances. A rare weather event could conceptually occur somewhere at any time."
"If you think of a rare event as a coin flip with an incredibly small chance of flipping heads, then remember that millions or billions of these coins are being flipped in any given domain every day. A certain number of rare events should happen by chance alone."
Back to back to back winning 13s on roulette. Doubled up after the first one because some randomer told me to take my winning chip off the number, it's not coming up again. Came up, left the doubled up chips on again, another win.
After the third time they said 'Wow, are you leaving it on again??'
I said 'No, I'm not stupid' and left with all my winnings
On a trip to New Zealand with my parents in 1988 (we lived in Florida). I don't remember what town we were in, but we checked out of our hotel and got in the rental car. Suddenly my dad realizes that he forgot his credit card at the front desk, so he goes back in.
As he's waiting for the desk clerk to go retrieve his card, he realizes that the elderly man next to him is also American, so they start talking. Long story short, turns out the other guy had been my dad's little league coach in Chicago in the 1950s.
Went on a cruise with my wife when we were young. We were sat with another couple at dinner who we really clicked with. We said we would keep in touch but never did. Almost a decade later we went on another cruise. Who did we end up next to at dinner? That same couple. It was insane. We had a great time and still don’t keep in touch.
We also tend to explain low-probability events as something mystical. We say that it was "fate" that brought us together again with an old friend. 'The stars aligned' for that person who just won the lottery, and so on. Franck says that it has to do with explaining improbable events.
"Attaching meaning to the things that happen in our lives is generally a spiritual rather than statistical activity. In their professional role, statisticians might be content to determine how improbable an event is relative to existing data."
"The bigger questions in life, such as the meaning behind why things happen the way they do, are of general interest to all humans but also beyond the scope of what statistics alone can provide," the professor notes.
Was at a veterans get together and two guys were talking about Normandy. One was a landing craft driver and the other was a soldier that took part in the landing. Eventually their stories line up really well, so well infact that that landing craft driver drove that marine to shore during d-day
My maternal grand-parents were traveling by train, going from here to there (no idea, long time ago), when they overheard some army WW2 veterans talk about a reunion they went to. The vets talked about who was at the reunion and who wasn't and were wondering how one of the vets that wasn't there was doing. They were talking about my paternal grand-father, the father-in-law of my grand-parents youngest daughter !
My high school girlfriend and I went to colleges on the opposite coast but kept in touch. We both made new friends as you do, and as we started talking over winter back home we were telling each other about our new best friends at school and realized they were from the same place. After we got back to school, found out THEY were best friends in high school!
I watched a guy get struck by lightning for a 2nd time. This was all in Missouri. The 1st time was a few years prior - he was mowing the grass in his tractor, a storm rolled in real fast, and he got hit running to the house. I didn't see that one, but his son was one of my good friends, and I was at the house fairly often, so I saw the aftermath and heard the story.
The 2nd time was while we were on a construction job, same deal, a storm rolled in out of nowhere (it was clear skies, and then we saw clouds and started cleaning up and 15 minutes later a torrential downpour starts). He was running back to the truck after tarping over some material and got struck again. I was in the truck looking right at him when it happened, it was f*****g unreal. I was absolutely sure he was dead. He had some hearing loss, his hair mostly burnt off (what didn't was shaved off), had some nasty burns and scars as a result and got knocked out. Spent a couple of days in the hospital and was back at work the following week (supervising - he was the owner anyway).
Me and my brother recently watched a small meteorite burn up and land in a field across the road from where we were working.
My ex and I were playing the number game where you guess the other’s number that they’re thinking of. We did it between 1-50, and I guessed his number correctly *6 times in a row*.
It’s never happened again, but he was absolutely losing his mind. He still brings it up randomly and asks if I’m a witch.
I ran out of gas once underneath an overpass on the way to the Holland Tunnel headed into NYC. Cars were flying on this highway and there was no way to get over. I couldn't leave the car cause I would get run over. But I heard tires screech like 15x and kept pumping the brakes to let people know I was stopped (even with the hazard lights on). Some guy with a pickup truck came with a huge chain, strapped it to the front of my car and pulled me to the gas station. Gave him cash since he saved my life. I always make sure to have enough gas now.
Just before going off the a new city, I was working in a computer store. Sold a nice local couple a new laptop. A week later I'm 1000 miles away taking the subway from the airport to pick up the keys to my new place. I hear "Hi, ” and look over, and it's that same couple.
I'm from Vancouver, Canada. I was visiting Munich, Germany and met a couple from White Rock, they were distressed because something got screwed up in their itinerary and my friends and I helped them sort it out.
Weeks later I am taking the train from Amsterdam to Bruges during a massive thunder storm, I actually saw a tree get hit by lightning then a minute later they announced we would be going back because there was an issue ahead.
We get back to Amsterdam and the station is packed with so many people who are trying to figure out what the plan is now, then I hear someone yell my friends name and it's our new friends from White Rock, who we've now met in two different countries 8000km from home where we lived 40min apart.
Just last year me and a friend were in Japan visiting a mamashibe cafe and while we were waiting in line these two girls entered after us and the one talking had an Australian accent so I said hello being neighbours from New Zealand and she points to the other girl with her and she’s like, she’s also a kiwi! Any way long story short the kiwi girl literally grew up on the same street as me, about ten houses down and we spent our whole lives so close but didn’t know each other haha. Seems so odd we ran into each other in such a remote part of the world.
I know nz is a small place but it isn’t that small.
I've spent the majority of my life in rural communities where you know every single resident and their familial lineage, broken up by living in cities where you might not know the tenants on your floor.
Dad was born in a very small hospital in 1939 in Fullerton, CA. Successful life, aero engineer, retired a millionaire at 55 and hung em up. Bought a camper and travelled the states with a fly rod for a few years. Bought a house on a golf course in AR while he was fishing in Montana. Turns out the groundskeeper at the course was born a few minutes prior to him in the next room over. Still tells Pop to respect his elders lol.
They met at 1 day old and re-met 57 years later. I love it.
Had my tonsils out age 5 - small children's ward at the cottage hospital (UK) all having had their tonsils out. One boy in the opposite corner to me developed chickenpox, and the entire ward came down with it over the next couple of weeks (we were home by then) Met this guy some 20 years later - we lived in the same area but had gone to differing schools etc, so not in the same circle. Chatting to his mum one day, turns out we'd been in the same ward, and he was the one who'd given us all chickenpox....
I (American) sparked up a random conversation with a guy (Canadian) while on a small island off the coast of Croatia in 2021. We discovered that we were both in the same industrial park in rural England at shops across the parking lot from one another at the exact same time in 2017.
Met one guy on a dating website. Found we both took the same train back in 2006 to move to the same city for different companies at the same business park.
Was descending in a commercial airplane through the clouds and saw a skydiver parachuting in the clouds about a football field away from us. My jaw dropped.
Two friends playing a dice game. One rolls 5 6s. The other then has his turn & also rolls 5 6s. I don’t know the odds but I’m pretty sure they’re astronomical
I bumped into the same mate in different countries, different years, no plans.
Poker night with friends: One friend got two royal flushes in a row.
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I was telling a story about someone a friend high school who had just transferred to the college I was at. He hadn't told me he was transferring there, so I was somewhat astonished when as if on cue, he showed up. So I was a couple hundred miles away from that college, and I was describing his impeccable timing. I said, "and Boom, just like that, in walks Simon LeBon." (Not his actual name, of course.) And sure enough, on cue, he comes walking through the door. So I transferred universities, and was telling the crazy story, and just when I got to the part where I described how insame it was that he walked right in the door exactly when I said, "Boom! In walks Simon LeBon," in comes Simon LeBon. He was visiting his girlfriend who had also transferred. "Wait... that's him?"
Went glacier walking in Switzerland, we are from the U.K., tradition dictated we had a schnapps in the bar at the starting point, one of our party, Phil, walks up to the bar and says to the bar woman ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’, cue sniggers from our party at Phil’s lame chat up line, she replies ‘yes, you drink in The Kenilworth don’t you?’, Two pubs 900 miles apart and we meet the bar staff from our local, there working as part of her gap year. He never did get her number though 😀
I once watched my Dad flick a sucker stick accidentally against the window directly back into his fingers the exact same way he was about to flick it. You could hear the clack on the glass. It was amazing! 1 in a million.
I was telling a story about someone a friend high school who had just transferred to the college I was at. He hadn't told me he was transferring there, so I was somewhat astonished when as if on cue, he showed up. So I was a couple hundred miles away from that college, and I was describing his impeccable timing. I said, "and Boom, just like that, in walks Simon LeBon." (Not his actual name, of course.) And sure enough, on cue, he comes walking through the door. So I transferred universities, and was telling the crazy story, and just when I got to the part where I described how insame it was that he walked right in the door exactly when I said, "Boom! In walks Simon LeBon," in comes Simon LeBon. He was visiting his girlfriend who had also transferred. "Wait... that's him?"
Went glacier walking in Switzerland, we are from the U.K., tradition dictated we had a schnapps in the bar at the starting point, one of our party, Phil, walks up to the bar and says to the bar woman ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’, cue sniggers from our party at Phil’s lame chat up line, she replies ‘yes, you drink in The Kenilworth don’t you?’, Two pubs 900 miles apart and we meet the bar staff from our local, there working as part of her gap year. He never did get her number though 😀
I once watched my Dad flick a sucker stick accidentally against the window directly back into his fingers the exact same way he was about to flick it. You could hear the clack on the glass. It was amazing! 1 in a million.
