My brain made the coincidence
As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.
understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.
Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.
Once I had a new L reg car which was 10 years old (new to me, not an oxymoron).
Just by naturally observing all the cars passing me (when on foot) it seemed that about half of them were an L reg.
Obviously it was impossible for half of all cars to be exactly 10 years old, so I started to pay attention to every car that passed: AN LREG, no, no, no, no, no, AN LREG, no, no, no.
This illustration shows how my brain noticed all the L reg cars and ignored the rest. I never did measure the actual frequency, I just established it was well below 50%.
Date submitted:Wed, 25 Nov 2015 14:06:21 +0000Coincidence ID:8310
