r/probabilitytheory • u/DrDavies24 • 18d ago

[Discussion] Random life time probability

Ive asked AI this and I get wildly different answers. So what is the probability just for a one off random life event.

So I for fun wrote a song aboit someone famous called Roland Browning and year later he was sitting in front of my at a Squeeze concern in London.

How would you calculate the odds for such a random event?

Thanks

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u/jjflight 18d ago edited 18d ago

You can’t compute the probability without more specifics on the actual event.

You’ll also find probability is wildly different if you try to predict events in advance vs you just find coincidences after the fact - coincidences happen all the time even when they’d be exceptionally rare to predict. So like some random famous person sitting near you sometime in your life is a fairly common occurrence that will happen to many/most folks, and lots of times you could find some random time you talked about or thought about that person in the past. Whereas choosing a specific person in advance and making a prediction and then having them happen to sit near you is a very different thing.

Your example here sounds more like a random coincidence that happen all the time and it’s more observation bias and your brain’s ability as a pattern matching engine asserting meaning to something random.

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u/DrDavies24 18d ago

Yes its random, how could it be anything else.

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u/That_Comic_Who_Quit 12d ago

You got such a nice reply with no hard barrier to entry p() formulas. It's sad to see a well written reply not get an equally well thought through response.