like the weather

Earlier today, Alex was getting all worked up about my claiming that winning the lottery is luck based. He argued that if you buy one ticket, you have a one in whatever chance of winning, and if you buy more tickets, your chance of winning increases: it’s basic probability. I disagreed claiming that even if the (mathematical) odds are in your favor, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a greater chance of winning if luck is not on your side. Sure, I know that if you flip a coin 100 times, you’ll get heads just about half the time. However, if you flip a coin once, you can’t predict whether you’re going to get heads or tails on that particular instance, and that’s where luck comes in. He was getting all frustrated that someone in the sciences can distrust the application of fundamental mathematical theory to real life. Hey, maybe luck is not the word; call it what you want, G-d, fate, fortune, magic, but I can’t believe that the seemingly random happenings of life can be explained by probability alone. Later Alex mentioned how less than a year ago he bought a top-of-the-line laptop and already he had to send it back for repairs twice. I told him: it must be that you were just unlucky.