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Derren Brown, Statistics and Richard Feynman
I very much enjoyed Derren Brown’s latest, and I approve of the message about engaging with life, something I’ve been trying to figure out how to do better.
One thing that didn’t sit with me so well was his talk about how unlikely it is that this person was born considering all the things that had to happen to lead up to that event. Derren Brown is a skeptic and so I thought this was particularly disingenuous, since I’m certain that he realises that he’s making something quite trivial sound incredible.
Basically the problem is that he’s starting with the result and working backwards. It brings to mind the excellent Feynman quote:
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”
Of course, the license plate ARW 357 is one of millions of possibilities, but that doesn’t mean that it’s amazing every time you see a license plate. They’re all one of millions, and it has to be one of them.
Part of the point that Feynman was trying to make is that you can’t just hunt for anomalies after the fact and then say they are somehow significant. You have to make predictions and do the test and see if those predictions bear out. If Feynman had thought to himself ‘I bet I see license plate ARW 357 in the parking lot’ and it turned out to be true, that would be interesting data, something requiring an explanation.
In the same way it’s not amazing (at least statistically, although perhaps biologically) that any one person is born. It’s just like that license plate.
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