Easy as 1–2-3

1.
Did you know that Prob­a­bil­ity The­ory didn’t exist until the 17th cen­tury? Up until 350 years ago (give or take) it was incon­ceiv­able that we could mea­sure the like­li­ness of an event and then express this like­li­ness in num­bers. I was shocked to learn that this was so recently out of mind’s reach for us.

I went to hear NPR’s Math Guy, Keith Devlin, deliver a lec­ture on his most recent book, The Unfin­ished Game. Devlin reminded me of the guys from Radio Lab, com­mu­ni­cat­ing “advanced” con­cepts to diverse audi­ences with the help of dif­fer­ent media. His book claims that a sin­gle document–a let­ter between Blaise Pas­cal and Pierre de Fer­mat–changed the field of math­e­mat­ics and rad­i­cally trans­formed the way peo­ple think and reason.

The story I heard goes like this: Early prob­a­bil­ity was lim­ited to gam­bling, where, for exam­ple, it was com­monly known that the odds of rolling two sixes is 1/36 (I had to look that up just now). Deter­min­ing odds in a finite set­ting was one thing, but apply­ing this kind of logic to messy human behav­ior was (and is) alto­gether different.

For cen­turies, a by-our-standards sim­ple prob­lem con­founded schol­ars, who rou­tinely failed to solve it. Say two guys–Albert and Bernie–are play­ing a game of stakes with 5 rounds. The first to win 3 rounds takes the pot. At the end of round three, Albert has 1 win and Bernie has 2. For some unknown rea­son, they have to call it quits and part ways, never to resume to game. With­out a clear win­ner, how should they divide the pot?

Well, if you work out all the pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios for how the game could have pro­ceeded (there are only 4), you find that odds are 1:3 in favor of Bernie tak­ing the pot. Albert’s chances of win­ning are 1 in 4; Bernie’s: 3 in 4. So, Albert should take ¼ of the pot, Bernie: ¾. DUH Blaise!

Until 1654, math­e­mati­cians claimed that this was an unsolv­able prob­lem; the ques­tion of how to divide the pot of an unfin­ished game was impos­si­ble to answer. While strug­gling with the impos­si­ble, Pas­cal sought the help of Fer­mat, the most respected math­e­mati­cian of his time. And, after some cor­re­spon­dence, Fer­mat (remark­ably) arrived at the solution. !!!.

Pas­cal still couldn’t com­pre­hend the solu­tion even after it was spelled out for him. He whined and con­tested and devel­oped a more com­pli­cated (and less cor­rect) solu­tion. As Devlin repeat­edly pointed out, peo­ple sim­ply didn’t think this way. Sure, they could draw on past expe­ri­ence and data and make rea­son­able pre­dic­tions, but they didn’t bank on their pre­dic­tions; they didn’t mea­sure and quan­tify data, then cal­cu­late out­comes and pre­scribe behav­ior. Not like that, anyway.

Schol­ars once thought non­de­ter­min­is­tic events (those con­tain­ing ran­dom­ness and vari­able fac­tors) were the mys­te­ri­ous yet-to-be-unfolded ways of whatever’s-in-control. The belief that the future was out of our hands, impos­si­ble to pre­dict, was pow­er­ful enough to block or con­tra­dict the logic of basic prob­a­bil­ity. Belief and logic aren’t so dif­fer­ent: they’re wed, for bet­ter or worse.

When I try to put myself in that mind­set, not tak­ing for granted the world I was raised in, I can almost feel the logic. The future belongs to Fortune–it can’t be com­puted. It would be arbi­trary, silly, unfounded to divide the pot accord­ing to an unknown future–according to noth­ing. Sud­denly, sooth­say­ers, palm read­ers, and folk almanacs don’t seem so cocka­mamie. What more appro­pri­ate weapon to wield before the absur­dity of For­tune than, well, absurdity?

2.
Super­sti­tions learn from metaphor, emu­lat­ing the way words leap from sense to dis­con­nected sense. Our minds are full of things we’ve made up; rela­tion­ships that don’t exist; sky­scrap­ers with­out skeletons.

Since I can remem­ber, my par­ents have anointed my fore­head with oil. On the first day of school, Dad with the squeeze bottle–the same oil used to rub beach tar from our soles. Mov­ing out, Mom with the extra-large, Extra-Virgin Olive. Spilled it on the tile and my dog licked it up. Gen­tly lift the bangs and two quick strokes with the thumb. Don’t exhale ’til it’s done. Don’t wipe ’til you’re gone.

3.
For pro­tec­tion from bad things, do the fol­low­ing with­out fail: Adopt an old dog. Dry out his eyes when he’s dead and tie them to your left wrist. Write a let­ter to your sweet­heart. Write it again with Chee­tos fin­gers then lick it clean. Sing the Prayer of Jabez out your base­ment win­dow as long as it’s rain­ing. Sing it with the water in your mouth.

Do it with­out fail. In doing so, you will erase your credit his­tory. Count your mutual funds, clip the weather reports, apply for loans that aren’t FDIC insured. Go back to school.

For pro­tec­tion, for money, for love: climb the golden arm and be sure the cam­era is ready. Don’t call and don’t wait. Always get the idiot’s insur­ance infor­ma­tion. For secu­rity, for friend­ship, for suc­cess: join the Wall Street Choir, become a young pro­fes­sional, have luck, have tim­ing, have tal­ent, will travel.