Week 3: Discussion - Impossible, Certain, or... Not So Much!

Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes Benjamin Franklin

People often take certain events for granted, like death and taxes, or like being here tomorrow. That's because all of our experience tells us that the probability of someone eventually passing away is 1. Looking back through history, every single person has died and, therefore, the number of cases favorable to the event is the same as the number of cases. One person has to die, however, that only happens on one day of the multiple days that a person lives. Therefore, the probability of dying on a certain day is 1 divided by the number of days yet to live, which we expect to be quite significant, resulting in a low probability of actually not being alive tomorrow.

Discuss the human tendency to assume events with a low probability as impossible and events with high probability as certain. In your initial post, reflect on this issue and present at least one example of such a situation.