Monday, December 7, 2015

Monologue Mania Day # 664 Statistical Probablity (for Real Life Science) by Janet S. Tiger Dec. 7, 2015

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Monologue Mania Day # 664 Statistical Probablity (for Real Life Science) by Janet S. Tiger Dec. 7, 2015
                                       
                        Real Life Science - Statistical Probablity
                                       by  Janet S. Tiger    
                                © 2015  all rights reserved 
                                     tigerteam1@gmail.com

           (Mother comes onstage dressed in a bathrobe.  She is smiling, but underneath we sense....more)


What are the odds?

In laboratories and the high fallutin' world of mathematical investigation, statistics is a game of chance that is determined by numbers.

If you have a coin with two sides - one head, one tail - what are the odds that you will have the coin land on the tails side?  50/50 - or so they tell us.  Two chances - one outcome.  Only.
One over two.

Simple - but in the REAL world of Science - here is the truth.  What are the chances that if you put one pair of socks into the washing machine - that's two socks - into one washing machine - that the pair will come out of the dryer as a pair - both socks, two socks.  Quick - what are the odds that one sock ONLY will emerge? 

Is it two socks over one machine?  Is it one sock over two socks?  Is it....one sock into the black hole of space?  You got it - the odds of losing one sock are an amazing - 100 %!

Now, you ask, how is that possible?  Because in the real world, things are not so simple as in controlled laboratory experiments.  The key word here being - controlled.

We go into the real world and suddenly.....instead of a head and a tail - the coin has two heads  - both of which are yelling at you - or crying, or just irritating in some unforeseen way!

The key to the world - as opposed to the 'controlled' laboratory, is UNFORESEEN!

Never imagined, even when you know it's going to happen, like you know that no matter how you put the lunch bag on the table and say, here it is, ready to go, the person  - an intelligent person with a degree, or a child running to school, it is immaterial - the person IS GOING TO LEAVE IT BEHIND AND YOU WILL HAVE TO RUN AFTER THE CAR/SCHOOL BUS IN YOUR OLD RATTY BATHROBE AND SLIPPERS...IN THE SNOW!...AND MAYBE YOU WILL CATCH THEM AND MAYBE NOT....what are the odds here?

100% that you will have wet soggy slippers
100% that the people who forgot the lunch will BLAME YOU for their forgetfulness
100% that ....you .....are the odd one

And that is today's lesson in Real World Statistics.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go change my slippers.....

           (She turns to leave, stops, looks back)

They're 100% soggy.......

           (She leaves, squishing her way to another scientific discovery)

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Janet S. Tiger    858-736-6315
JanetSTigerMonologueMania.blogspot.com
Member Dramatists Guild since 1983
Playwright-in-Residence
Swedenborg Hall 2006-8