On Probability (Trivia)

"Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities - that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustrations." (Edgar Allen Poe, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", 1841)

"[Sherlock Holmes:] How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" (Sir Arthur C Doyle, "Sign of the Four", 1890)

"Life is a gamble at terrible odds; if it was a bet you wouldn't take it." (Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", 1955)

"As is known, the question of the objectivity or the subjectivity of probability has divided the world of science into two camps. Some maintain that there exist two types of probability, as above, others, that only the subjective exists, because regardless of what is supposed to take place, we cannot have full knowledge of it. Therefore, some lay the uncertainty of future events at the door of our knowledge of them, whereas others place it within the realm of the events themselves." (Stanisław Lem, " A Perfect Vacuum", 1971)

"People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be." (Isaac Asimov, "The Planet That Wasn't", 1976)

"Luck was not probability, but it acted through probability. It was, so to speak, quantities of probability, a quantitative average throughout the universe. And like any other fixed quantity, it could only be concentrated or increased at the cost of a diminution elsewhere." (Barrington J Bayley, "The Grand Wheel", 1977)

"The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being." (Madeline L'Engle, "Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage", 1988)

"Probability does pervade the universe, and in this sense, the old chestnut about baseball imitating life really has validity. The statistics of streaks and slumps, properly understood, do teach an important lesson about epistemology, and life in general. The history of a species, or any natural phenomenon, that requires unbroken continuity in a world of trouble, works like a batting streak. All are games of a gambler playing with a limited stake against a house with infinite resources. The gambler must eventually go bust. His aim can only be to stick around as long as possible, to have some fun while he's at it, and, if he happens to be a moral agent as well, to worry about staying the course with honor!" (Stephen J Gould, 1991)

"Misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all impediments to scientific literacy." (Stephen J Gould, "Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history", 1995)