Quote from: ethought on May 21, 2014, 06:56:41 PM

Quote from: kik1977 on May 20, 2014, 09:26:10 PM

Comparatively speaking, your odds of being struck by lightning are about 1 in 280,000, so youre about 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to find an address within the first year. Since thats also a big number, the odds are equivalent to being struck by lightning about 4.6 times in your lifetime[/i]

Man struck by lightning 7 times.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/inside-the-life-of-the-man-known-as-the-spark-ranger/2013/08/15/947cf2d8-ea40-11e2-8f22-de4bd2a2bd39_story.html

Lightning strikes are a bad example of probability. It assumes that everyone has an equal chance of being struck by lightning, and that the distribution is random across the globe.

In actuality, there are some areas that have significantly more electrical storms, and some people spend much more time exposed to the opportunity to be struck.

If you really want to use a lightning based example, I prefer this one:

Quote from: molecular on November 03, 2012, 07:45:18 PM

probability of getting struck by lightning in any given year: 1/280000.
probability of taking a shit at any given point in time: 1/(60*24) = 1/1440 (assuming you take a crap every day and the actual process takes 1 minute)
probability of getting struck by lightning while taking a crap in any given year: 1/(280000*1440) = 1/1.47E11 = 2.48E-9
probability of taking a crap while being in a situation where being struck by lightning can actually occur = 1/1440 = 0.25 = 1.74E-4
probability of finding a collision: 1E-65
getting hit by lightning while taking a crap for how many years in a row is equally probable as finding a collision: log(1E-65) / log(1.74E-4) = 17.3

is my math roughly correct now?

If so, I can say: "Finding a collision is about as likely as being struck by lightning while taking a crap every year for 17 years in a row".

You'll notice that even with the addition of the requirement of actually being in the process of "taking a crap" at the very moment of being struck by lightning, it is still significantly less likely than being strucm 4.6 (or 7) times in a lifetime.