Showing posts with label fun with math. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun with math. Show all posts

Monday, December 20, 2010

What are the Chances?

The last three times I started my car, much to my amazement, Mariah Carey was singing her rendition of 'O Holy Night' that includes the one verse with her singing at least three octaves above my vocal range.  I have the car radio turned on one of the local stations playing Christmas carols, and this station is having their Top 100 Christmas Carol Countdown, which I've managed to hit at EXACTLY the same point, three times in three days.  Impressive right?
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Mariah's song was followed on all three occasions by "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas."  Not to sound too bah humbug about it, but I think the hippo song is one of my very least favorite Christmas songs.  Ben, however, loves this song so much that today when we got in the car he said (even before hearing the song again), "Mom, I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.   No, I'm just kidding.  I want Legos."

Now the really amazing thing to me is that all three errands occurred at different times each day.  What are the chances of catching the same carol in the countdown on the radio?  Really, I'm curious. Fortunately, I took a whole graduate level class in Probability and Statistics and we can easily figure it out (since this type of problem is from Chapter 1)!

(I'm just now realizing there is no equation editor in Blogger.  Bummer.) 

1) For the calculation, each instance of 'O Holy Night' is an independent event.
2) Since B101 is having their Top 100 countdown, the total number of possible songs to hear for each event is 100 songs.
3) The probability of hearing 'O Holy Night' one time when I turned on the radio is 1 in a 100 (P=0.01). The same for the second time and third time. 

Overall Probability= 1/P1 * 1/P2 * 1/P3
P = 0.000001

-OR-

The chances of hear this song right when I turn on the radio three times in three days is 1 in 1,000,000.
ONE IN A MILLION. 

I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket.  
(and change the radio station)