odds

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2010-07-13-lottery-winner-texas_N.htm?csp=hf

So I've gotten an e-mail something like the following several times now: followed by a spam ad for a casino website. So boiled down, this "system" just says "don't quit when you're behind, but quit when you're ahead". (Although instead of "quit" it talks about making a smaller bet, and...

Okay, forget all this if you already read it before I deleted the question. If you had read it but don't know the answer - there's a two-game minimum in Aussie Powerball I'm okay now. Nothing to see here - unless you know where there's some "psychic picks" for this week's Aussie Powerball...

I have a couple questions about basic statistics that I want to know I have the right answer on in case I don't, because it pertains to a paranormal claim. If five random numbers are generated each between 0-9, what is the probability of two out of those five numbers being for example '8'? I'm...

There's a dice game played in the bars in my area called Horse. Two or more players wager a dollar (could be more, but for our purposes let's use a dollar), and roll 5 dice. The goal is to get the most dice of a kind while getting the highest kind. For example, three threes is not as good as...

There are five cards; three black and two red. If you pick three, what are the odds of picking both red cards? I worked it out at 30% by scribbling down all the combinations and picking the first three cards each time. (Don't know if that's right or not.) Presumably there is a rather better...

A psychic I once visited (I've posted about her before) told me that God exists, and she followed up with "the odds of being born are 1 in 400,000,000...better chances of winning the lottery." I just wanted to know if there is any truth to that and if anyone has heard anything like that before.

I'm no conspiracy nut, but I'd like to take the pulse of the group here on whether or not you think Saddam will make it to trial. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8298669/ Will he meet his end in his cell before trial? Will he be allowed to speak freely in court? If you think the Downing Street...

. . . your family because of your skepticism of religion? I was raised staunch Catholic, and didn't actually quit believing in fairy tales until my late twenties. I suppose it took that long for me to realize that I was "spinning my wheels." Since that time, I've been at odds with the my...

In the Paranormal portion of this forum, a test of a young Russian girl by the name of Natasha Demkina was brought up. And this led to me to wonder how Randi, and others, calculate the odds of success for various paranormal tests. Some I can figure out, but the one with Natasha has me stymied...

What are the odds? Many of our resident woo woo’s like to claim that the odds that paranormal “powers" are real (oh yea, I can bend spoons i'm so powerful) are less than zero (BFD) Here’s looking at it from another prospective, what are the odds of a “true thing” that has been...

I've just kept my lottery tickets for the whole of april and over the period I managed not to get a single correct number . I do 2 lines each week , so what are the odds of such a run of BAD luck ? Our lottery is 6 numbers from a possible 49 . By the way I can draw the obvious conclusion , stop...

Part of this query has already been discussed, but I need to know the odds of positive trials back to back as in the prelim and formal tests. Maybe you odds-makers and probability buffs can help with this. The published odds are 2.6 million to one against a chance event of correctly guessing...

According to this article in The Times a physicist (who is also religious) has used Bayes Theorem to calculate that there is a 66% chance that God exists, given all the data we have. Well, I guess it's a bit better that 50%, but still not too persuasive :) Worth a flutter at the bookies, maybe.

Sounds stupid, doesn't it. of COURSE they do...right? Well, they don't seem to matter to the person to whom the odds-against thing happened to. Also, consider that at any given moment, there are tons of people out there who are a 'victim' of some odds against bad luck, or are the recipients of...

I know there was a gambling thread before, but I've been thinking about this scenario. Devil's advocate here... Here's my paranormal power. I can make any number of coins a person flips come up any way I want. Let's say all heads. I don't use my powers in day to day activities. I can only...