It's probably gonna snow, Valentine's Day sucked and I'm not going to be living a long life. That's what it means.
Does it though? Not entirely.
1.
The world is full of probabilities and percentages. Americans especially need quantifiable ideas like this. It is the reason Rolling Stone (an American media creature) gives albums and movies ratings on a star system. It is also the reason a foreign publication, like NME, does not. Both magazines could have the same opinion of the album. Both could even use the same exact words for their review. At the end of the NME review, cries of "Tell me what your review was!" would be heard from Boston to San Diego. "Give me a star rating or don't rate it at all!" The internet has allowed for the indulgence of this ratings world. Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes work as aggregate rating instruments compiling individual reviews from across the entertainment landscape. The visitor is given an easy to understand number which represents the merit of the work. Rotten Tomatoes works on a percentage basis. They determine whether each individual rating is positive or negative and then tally each side. After some simple math, we can see very clearly that Valentine's Day (17%) is a bad movie and Crazy Heart (92%) is a good movie. I shall now go see Crazy Heart. I will never see Valentine's Day. Here's the problem, that 17% is not like a grade on a paper. It is not as if Valentine's Day get good marks in 17% of the ratings criteria (ie. good landscaping, two characters are well developed, everything else is terrible so this equals a 17%). All this number means is that out of a hypothetical 100 reviewers, 17 gave it a positive review. Isn't this a much more positive way to look at it? The chances that any one individual will like this movie depends on a multitude of different factors. All I do know is the chances I personally like this movie is not 17%.
2.
Before leaving the house, most people will check the weather either in the newspaper (if they are above 75 years old), on weather.com (if they are above 49 years old) or on their cell phone (the normal people). They are going to check two stats before anything else: temperature and chance of precipitation. Temperature is easily understood, it is the best guess the meteorologists have at what the high and low will be for the day based on models. As for the chance of precipitation, things get a little muddled. Ask five people what the percentage attached to this part of the forecast means and you're bound to get at least a couple different answers. They will range from the obvious "It means that it's probably gonna snow" to the strange "It means that it will snow for 70% of the day" to the moronic "It means that it will snow over 70% of the county". The closest answer will be that it's probably gonna snow. But what does the actual 70% mean? Uh, well, no one can tell you off hand. What it does mean is that over the course of history, given the conditions which will be present on this particular day, when looking back over every similar day, 70% of them produced precipitation. Hmmm. So there have been days exactly like the present day when it has snowed and there have been days exactly like the present day when it has not snowed. Does this mean that it's probably gonna snow, sort of. It also means that it's pretty much a coin flip, whether the percentage is 70% or 20%, whether it will snow on an individual day.
3.
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No one ever wants to be presented with the tragic diagnosis of a chronic disease. I can only imagine how it could alter a person's life to hear that they have a 25% chance of living until the 30 year mark. Does this change the entire makeup of the rest of your life? Do you make a bucket list and circle your 30th birthday as the deadline? Do you fear death will be upon you every day? When I hear this type of diagnosis, I immediately think that "30" is a magical number. Get to that point and you "win" somehow. I imagine there to be a real grim reaper who is waiting for the judgement day when the calendar hits the 30th birthday and either he strikes or not. Apparently he will strike 75% of the time and he will be beaten 25% of the time. Turns out this is not how it goes down. The day you get this diagnosis could be your last day. The day you get home from work when you are 26 could be your last day. The day you sit down in your favorite chair at 42 could be your last day. The doctor doesn't know what to tell you. He can only give you an idea of what survival rates for similar patients have been. Follow up question for the doctor: "What is the shortest time anyone has lived after diagnosis?" 43 hours. "And the longest?" Going on 37 years. 25% chance of living until your 30, but 50% chance of getting through each day.
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Be it movie ratings, the weather, chronic illness or anything involving chance, the odds reduce themselves to 50%. Chuck Klosterman goes on a quick tangential rant in his book of essays, "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs", against the study of probability. He explains, "Certain things can be impossible, and certain things can be guaranteed, but there is no sliding scale for maybe. Maybe something will happen, or maybe it won't". And later, "Either something is true or it isn't. Do or do not; there is no try". When it comes to personal circumstances this is the only way in which the world works; probabilities, percentages and odds only work on a large group.
Yes, most everybody who watches Valentine's Day thinks it is a terrible movie, but I may be one of the 17 who like it. For me, it's 50/50 going into the theater.
Yes, most of the time under these conditions it snow, but it can easily be one of the 30 times it doesn't. This individual day there either will or will not be snow.
Yes, I might not be in the best health situation and my most similar peer group has shown a trend towards early death. Individually, though, each day there is either life or death. There is no try.
GRM
Some day soon I will call you and explain why I think odds and percentages are 72% more important than you're giving them credit for. Learning poker at a high level taught me a lot about a lot of things, odds being the top one. There's all sort of odds (pot odds, implied odds, etc ... ) and learning to apply them to your day-to-day life is both fun and beneficial.
ReplyDeleteSo, soon, we're going to have this debate. I'm looking forward to it.