Forecast: Probability of Miracles

Who expects miracles? Do you? Do they require faith, luck or magic? Are they answers to pleading with deities or are they rare events which we have no real understanding of?

In Sedgewicks (2013) book 'She Is Not Invisible' we are taken through a journey of exploration including numbers, patterns, probability, coincidence and miracles. We are shown the links between what seem to be random events and also dissuaded from making correlations between random events which are not connected.

One example is how we might be 'amazed' at the coincidence of meeting someone at a party with the same birthday, when we only need 23 people to be at the party to have a 50-50 chance that there will be 2 people who have the same birthday. Furthermore, we are told if there are 30 its a 70% chance and if 57 a 99% chance (Sedgwick, 2013).

And we are told of Littlewoods Law which explains 'miracles' as 'something that might have a million-to-one chance of happening' which when we consider the vast number of experiences we have every day, means they happen more frequently than we might think (Sedgwick, 2013). 

Statistically, we can 'expect to see something miraculous happen every 35 days' (Ibid). So no need for belief or magic, while you go about your normal life something 'miraculous' will happen, approximately every month. 

What is going to be your million-to-one experience this month?

Careful – you might miss it, if you're not looking out for it, if you don't believe in miracles or think they are not going to happen to you. Million-to-one happenings are not so rare and miracles happen whether you believe in them or not.

The forecast for the future is a high chance of miracles. 

Sedgwick, M. (2013) She Is Not Invisible, Hachette UK