Horrifying Odds/Shocking Statistics

I was reading an article online with the local classic rock station on and the radio jock starting talking about odds of things happening.  I wasn't paying much attention, but he mentioned the odds of winning the lottery, then went on with other long odds of things happening to you.  It wasn't until the last bit of information he mentioned that my ears perked up.

I did not remember all the numbers, but I went to see the odds of playing the lottery. From Wonderopolis:

In a lottery in which you pick 6 numbers from a possible pool of 49 numbers, your chances of winning the jackpot (correctly choosing all 6 numbers drawn) are 1 in 13,983,816. That's 1 shot in almost 14 million.

If you were to buy one lottery ticket each week in such a scenario, you could expect to win once every 269,000 years.

That's pretty good odds compared to the Mega Millions jackpot. According to Wikipedia the odds of hitting a jackpot on that game are 302,575,350 to 1.

Of course, if you want a little better odds than that, then you can play Powerball, which according to Wiki has odds of "only" 1 in 292,201,338 of winning the big prize.

I don't remember all the categories - just the last couple - the radio jock brought up, but northjersey.com claims that you have a much better chance of being killed by a vending machine 112 million to one - than winning either the Powerball or Mega Millions.  They also say it's a much better bet that an asteroid will hit the Earth, 1-75,000.  Also, the article says the odds of finding a four-leaf clover are 1-10,000 and being hit by lightning 1 in 15,300.

I wonder what the odds are of being hit by lightning AND an asteroid while looking for a four-leaf clover?

Never mind.

Anyway, the radio jock went on with some odds I found distressing and unlike the other millions to one odds, I remembered these.  He said the odds of a man cheating on his wife were 1 in 5.  That upset me for some reason, even though I knew that was pretty accurate.  I'm just proud that when I was married, I was one of the four faithful guys.

The other stat that bothered me was in the same category, namely that 1 in 7.5 women cheated on their husbands.  I'm certain that my ex was one of those 6.5 faithful women.

Which brings me to something about that last stat;  just exactly how does one cheat with .5 of a person, half a woman? Would that be the top half?  Just guessing, but I'd say it would have to be the bottom half to really fall under the definition of cheating, but that's just my twisted mind.  Whats even more twisted is the thought of the woman being half a woman vertically...split right down the middle 

I guess that could be the case, more than the top/bottom scenarios.  After all, the odds of a woman having conjoined twins is 1-200,000....and if they had been separated, and a man cheated with one of the twins, that technically would be the point 5 of a woman, right?

I guess if a guy cheated with BOTH of the still-joined twins, that would skew the statistics, right?  Would you count that as one or TWO of that 7.5 figure?

What's really horrifying is me thinking about stuff like this.  Trust me, the odds of me doing THAT is pretty much a sure thing.

Moonlighters

I'm sitting here waiting on the Cowboys/Redskins game that starts at noon and the host on the online radio show I'm listening to said it's raining in Washington, DC.  I decided I'd go look at the DC area weather radar to see if it looked like it would rain all through the game. (I'm thinking Dallas would benefit from good, dry weather because I think the offense will have to carry the day)

On the website header there is a graphic with two of the station's weather people;  I didn't pay them much mind at first, but after looking at the radar, my gaze was drawn back to them...they looked familiar:

The graphic says their names are Doug Hill and Jacqui Jeras, but I'm not so sure.

I think it's Joe Biden and Gwyneth Paltrow moonlighting at their second jobs.

The Oldest Woman in the World

Has a radio show.

Am listening to sports talk radio at the moment and the hosts are talking about the Academy Award nominations. They're raving about Lincoln, a movie I want to see but not enough to break down and go to the theater.  I'll wait until it comes out on video or go to one of those sites that doesn't much care about copyright infringement.



They're especially gushing over the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis and from the short trailers I've seen, he does resemble President Lincoln. One of the male hosts asked the woman on the show if the actor did a good job portraying Lincoln and she said "Spot on! Captures him perfectly!".

Uh, I can understand saying he LOOKS like Lincoln, but how the hell would she know anything else about the man?  Lincoln had his photograph taken several times, but there's no recordings of his speech or film of him.  Photography was still in its infancy;  there were certainly no movies, records or tapes then.

Aw, hell...these idiot talking heads don't know much about sports, why would I expect them to know much of anything about movies?

Yep, they're stupid...but maybe I'm more stupid for listening to them. 

Close, but....

At this moment, I'm sitting here listening to online radio, namely the Michael Smerconish Show. (that's his website; I'm listening to AOL Radio which replaced my Yahoo/ATT Launchcast) I wouldn't ordinarily listen to him; he's a blowhard, it's "all about him" and he fills in the time between commercials with plugs for his book. To top all that off, he says he's a conservative Republican, yet admits to voting for Obama. Sheesh. I can listen to liberals, but I don't much care to listen to hypocrites.

I wasn't paying a lot of attention, but instead was concentrating on trying to win the 122,347th game of Hearts I've played, then Smerconish brought up a topic I thought interesting and the show started taking phone calls. The subject was "What president would you most like to play golf with?" One of the first callers brought up Ronald Reagan and I immediately thought you'd have to give him a pretty extreme handicap being as how he's dead and all that. I understood the premise, though, so I played along with the fantasy picks.

My first choice of a president I'd like to play golf with was Eisenhower because I think it'd be cool to talk to him about WWII while we played and one caller echoed my choice. The other presidents named were Bush I and II and someone called in and said "Nixon" because he knew he could beat him. (And the inference was he'd not only beat him in the match, but he'd beat him with his nine-iron. Good Grief, the guy's dead and the hate still lives on)

Another guy called in and named Obama because "I've heard he's honest with his scorecard." I didn't doubt that, but figured you'd never get to see it and you'd also get stuck with the greens fees and the tab from the clubhouse bar...for the next 20 years.

Then some woman calls in and in a gushing voice said she'd LOVE to play golf with Clinton. "I think it's be SO COOL to play a round with him". Hmm, from the sound of her voice, it sounded like "play around with him"....and that's probably what she meant, from the unbridled admiration that came through the speakers. She went on: "I'd love to sit there and smoke a cigar with him, just talk about STUFF!"

Uh, dear heart, I'm sure Mr. Clinton would want to talk about "stuff", probably "your stuff". I also wouldn't take a cigar from him, not in any shape, form or fashion.