Miracle on Probability Street
The Law of Large Numbers guarantees that one-in-a-million miracles happen 295 times a day in America.
Because I am often introduced
as a "professional skeptic," people feel compelled to
challenge me with stories about highly improbable events.
The implication is that if I cannot offer a satisfactory
natural explanation for that particular event, the general
principle of supernaturalism is preserved. A common story
is the one about having a dream or thought about the death
of a friend or relative and then receiving a phone call
five minutes later about the unexpected death of that very
person.
I cannot always explain such specific incidents, but a
principle of probability called the Law of Large Numbers
shows that an event with a low probability of occurrence
in a small number of trials has a high probability of
occurrence in a large number of trials. Events with
million-to-one odds happen 295 times a day in America.
By Michael Shermer
