I absolutely love the “Becker Bottle”. It gives you the ability to truly visualize this concept. Super fun to play with and a great learning aid for chemistry classes.
https://www.flinnsci.com/becker-bottle-one-in-a-million/ap45...
What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
101–110 of 199 posts
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#102From a sibling submission in front page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
"Micromort" is a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death, […] used to measure the riskiness of various day-to-day activities.
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer the interpretation of an ominous prediction that the presidency will be filled by 24 million babies someday soon. Switzerland does have a committee of 7 people as president, only a small step from that to 24 million babies.
Of course it's a very small step to make babies amounting to 3 times the current population of Switzerland (so assuming roughly a 50/50 female/male divide, everyone needs to make 6 babies on average, in the same year so they will still all be babies when the last one is born? that's probably impossible for the females but we are already way into the science-fiction category) and put them all in a committee. The more…
What do you mean, "that's *probably* impossible" to make 6 babies from the same mother in a single year? Takes about 9 months to output a human, you know?
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#104> "Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten." -- Terry Pratchett Making fun of the fact that if someone says "it's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!" in fiction, you know it's going to work. In _Guards! Guards!_ this is taken to the point that…
The cheese-loving aviators have the Swiss-cheese-model to visualize how small unimportant errors can stack up to a catastrophic outcome. Though in my opinion there's a flaw in this thinking as no sane cheese seller would shuffle their layers of cheese after cutting them: Hence 1-in-million chances happen all the time. https://www.aviationfile.com/swiss-cheese-model/
You'd think that but the Toledo fondue flood of 1973 says otherwise.
I can't find the wiki link, but Ronald O'Sullivan, who'd just taken over his father's cheese shop, was attempting to make a single block of swiss after a long week of selling the first 80% of several blocks to different restaurants. He took those cheese tails and stacked them up, not realizing the dangers he was putting everyone else in. It was later found that there were several other contributing factors; he hadn't used a properly certified cheese cutting blade (baloney!) and had reused the wax liner to store the off-cuts prior to reassembling the cheese that ultimately failed.
Some say you can still smell the swiss on hot august days.
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#105> "Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten." -- Terry Pratchett Making fun of the fact that if someone says "it's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!" in fiction, you know it's going to work. In _Guards! Guards!_ this is taken to the point that…
GNU Terry!
I reread Eric this weekend, somewhat on a whim. Real pleasure. I also had totally forgotten he came up with the premise of the Good Place. He had such so many ideas.
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
To save some time for the rest of us: > If we guess a President will serve on average about 6 years, then [1 in (6 times 4.0 million =) 24 million] babies will someday be President.
I prefer the interpretation of an ominous prediction that the presidency will be filled by 24 million babies someday soon. Switzerland does have a committee of 7 people as president, only a small step from that to 24 million babies.
I was once informed that everybody has eaten at least eight spiders in their sleep. Another person in the same car confidently confirmed:
> It's true, if you're on you deathbed and you've only eaten one spider seven more come along and jump right in there at that last second.
I figured it was that sort of reasoning that got us to 24 million babies.
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it's a very small step to make babies amounting to 3 times the current population of Switzerland (so assuming roughly a 50/50 female/male divide, everyone needs to make 6 babies on average, in the same year so they will still all be babies when the last one is born? that's probably impossible for the females but we are already way into the science-fiction category) and put them all in a committee. The more…
What do you mean, "that's *probably* impossible" to make 6 babies from the same mother in a single year? Takes about 9 months to output a human, you know?
Ha! Nine women can have that baby in one month; management says so.
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#108From a sibling submission in front page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort "Micromort" is a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death, […] used to measure the riskiness of various day-to-day activities.
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer the interpretation of an ominous prediction that the presidency will be filled by 24 million babies someday soon. Switzerland does have a committee of 7 people as president, only a small step from that to 24 million babies.
I was once informed that everybody has eaten at least eight spiders in their sleep. Another person in the same car confidently confirmed: > It's true, if you're on you deathbed and you've only eaten one spider seven more come along and jump right in there at that last second. I figured it was that sort of reasoning that got us to 24 million babies.
This particular "fact" actually has a known source. Someone made it up as an example of the kinds of things people will believe: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/
Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)
#110I think getting killed by a meteorite is in that order of magnitude. But it is a bit of a tricky question. Because you can get hit by a small space rock, it has already happened but it is extremely rare, much less than 1 in a million, and I don't know if there is a record of anyone dying from it. But there is also a small chance of a massive impact killing billions in our lifetime, and intermediate scale events like…
There are records of people killed by meteorites, literally in single digits. A simple statistical test would give you an idea. With 10B people on Earth, a "one in a million per lifetime chance" would happen to 10M people during their lifetimes. If we optimistically assume that a lifetime is 100 years, and the chances do not change with age, the event would affect 100k people every year.
hmm, looks like someone forgot how many millions are in a billion. Those millennials.