probability puzzles

I listed all the years we started an economic recession for the last 2 centuries and sorted them by the last number of the year, 0 thru 9, as follows: # of events in years ending with number: 0 - 6 1 - 3 2 - 0 3 - 7 4 - 1 5 - 0 6 - 1 7 - 5 8 - 1 9 - 4 28 events No events in years ending...

From: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/money/5533099/detail.html?rss=bos&psp=money and many other sources, as well. Arrgh! No, NO, NO, NO, NO! Why does this come up everytime a number comes up twice in a row in a lottery? Will they ever get it right? ... I did check, and there are a few...

So - I always hear of how unlikely it is to win the lottery. This weekend someone said (with some authority) that getting hit by lightning 4 times is more likely than winning the lotto. Later on, he mentioned that getting bit by a poisonous spider and then dying from that bite is also more...

I know most of you are familiar with this one already, but we must settle it once and for all... Monty presents 3 doors; behind one is a car, and behind the other two are goats. You pick a door. But before Monty opens that door, he reveals behind another door that there is a goat. He then gives...

Im sure some of you have come across this before..but i was fascinated by the debate surrounding this. Somehow, both sides of the discussion seem to make sense.... Heres the question. You've got three doors.. Behind two of them is a goat, the other a car You choose one door to open....but...

Meadowlands has a Pick 4 (you have to pick the winner of 4 specific races in a row) that has a guaranteed payout of $75,000. The average race has 10 horses. How many possible combinations are there? Is it 10^10 Or 10^4 Or 4^10 I'm trying to figure if it would cost less than $75,000 to bet...

I was never good at this so if someone could figure it out for me I'd appreciate it... ok, Pepsi is running a promotion where if the bottle cap has a message written under it you win a free song download from Apple. The funny part is if you tilt the bottle just right you could read the winning...

My friend just stepped out to buy his lottery ticket. It is a ritual for him. I don't gamble at all. Nadda. The last I ever gambled was probably almost 25 years ago when I got in on football lotteries at work. (or whatever you called those things). Before that, I would play Friday night poker...

You have three balls in a sack, randomly colored either solid white or solid black, so that the combination of colors is unknown. Pull out one ball and note it's color and replace in sack. Repeat two more times. If all three pulls are the same color ball, what is the probability that the...

For those who don't know, Lembit Opik is a Member of Parliament in England whose only distinguishing feature is that he likes to champion the cause of defending the Earth from meteorite strikes. Tonight on TV he stated that "you are 750 times more likely to be killed by a meteorite than to win...