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What’s the most statistical/mathematically improbable thing that’s happened to you?

Grug

Grug

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,647
Genuinely not looking for sympathy because I'm coming out the other side of it now, but I am still amazed on a mathematical level that I was diagnosed with a particular tumour (thymoma) last year that is extremely rare... medical literature puts it as approximately one in 1.5 million. While it's not lottery odds, it seems crazy to me.

What is the most improbable statistical/mathematical event that has happened in your life? Good or bad.
 
Fiction

Fiction

Fanthropologist
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,825
Elf Tower, New Mexico
I move from New Mexico to North Dakota, then to Washington state as my husband was in wind turbine work.

The move to Washington put me in the same town as a brother I'd never met and had only ever heard of. Random move and I found a long lost brother and my nieces (my age) are super cool too.
 
zerocalories

zerocalories

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,249
California
I was born in a 3rd world country. All the way to having a white girlfriend making good money in the United States. I mostly like the best life out of anyone in my bloodline
 
FaceHugger

FaceHugger

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
13,949
USA
I was once watching a boxing match with my dad on HBO, long time ago. I was looking at one boxer and was willing him to jump. Well, he did, jumped straight up in the air. His opponent took the opportunity to beat the shit out of him as the two hosts exasperatedly discussed how they had never seen someone do something so stupid in a boxing match before.

So either my random thought that was 99.999999% guaranteed to never happen happened, or I am like Professor X.
 
Foxashel

Foxashel

Banned
Jul 18, 2019
710
Went to get gas, and the pump had the decimal in the wrong spot, so I filled up my car for less than 2 dollars. This was like 15 years ago.

Otherwise I got 3 Legendary items from a lot box in Apex one time.
 
Tyaren

Tyaren

Character Artist
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
24,955
I was on vacation on Capri, Italy, and randomly met a friend back from school in the street. The world is actually kinda small I guess.
 
HotHamBoy

HotHamBoy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
16,423
I dunno.

I once found a fossilized shark tooth embedded in a small rock in a stream bed in central Indiana.

Had it for years but at some point long ago I lost track of it. Still kicking myself.
 
Kain-Nosgoth

Kain-Nosgoth

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,706
Switzerland
I fell out of my bunk-bed when i was a kid, like maybe 8 y/o... i was on the top bed... and the side i was sleeping on, there's was a bedside table under it

But with extreme luck, that night i moved during my sleep and ended up on the opposite side (which never happened before, and never happened after that), so when i fell, my head didn't hit the nightstand at all

i doubt it would have killed me but it could have been a serious injury
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,277
In grade 5 some guy in my class went to the teacher to hand him a note from his parents saying he was going to get picked up early from school for a doctor's appointment. The teacher jokingly read the note out loud and said "wow, what? daniel has HOW many girlfriends??" and my and this other guy at the exact same second yelled out loud "62"
 
Peleo

Peleo

Member
Nov 2, 2017
2,656
Went to my first baseball game ever, ball went to my direction in the very first inning. It hit my shoulder and the guy in front of me got it. Still feel bad about my failure.
 
RiOrius

RiOrius

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,088
I shuffled a deck of playing cards. The particular order I got has a 1 in 8x10^67 chance of occurring.
 
y2kyle89

y2kyle89

Member
Mar 16, 2018
9,574
Mass
I got a $5 scratch ticket, won $20 and used that $20 to get gas. My car was near empty and all I had was a $5 and wasn't going to get paid until the end of the week.
 
Yunsar

Yunsar

Member
Oct 27, 2017
423
Accidentally knocked out a shiny Litwick in Pokemon White, and encounter another one (which I managed to capture) in mere minutes.
 

Kozmo

Member
Jan 5, 2018
245
I'm not sure what the stats are supposed to be, but in my near 40 years of life I've had 3 separate instances of birds pooping on me while out in the streets.
 
blame space

blame space

Resettlement Advisor
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
15,420
think about it like this.. what are the odds that a solitary super rare thing happens to you? really rare. but what are the odds that any possible thing happens to you? 100%

medicine is the worst with this. oh my God he had heflinger-kliner syndrome on top of an extremely rare blood disorder? the odds of that are astronomical! like dude there's so many rare disorders it would be weirder to not have one.
 
AGoodODST

AGoodODST

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,482
Hit by a camper van, tossed into the air and smashed head first into a post box on my way back down. Other than being in a coma for a bit, no injuries at all.
 

Deleted member 46948

Account closed at user request
Banned
Aug 22, 2018
8,852
I ate deadly nightshade as a kid while playing on a farm. By sheer luck, one of the adults was just nearby and noticed, found it suspicious, convinced my mom to take me to the ER right away and they had the presence of mind to take a sample of the plant with them (since neither knew what it was).
The doctor said that if we came 30 minutes later, it'd be too late.
 
Jokab

Jokab

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
875
Was on vacation in a rural italian village with family and friends of the family, and the dad of the other family was catching his breath after a run on the local piazza. Some guy rolls by on a vespa and starts chatting, turns out he's Swedish too. We are all invited to dinner at their summer house and it amazingly turns out that this family we just met is neighbours with our friend's dad's brother. I'm still friends with the daughter of the family we met and we're going on a trip together next week
 
SephiZack

SephiZack

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
804
I was playing mafia with a group of 12 people, ended up becoming the doctor in our first 2 games and saving the first victim both times.

On the 3rd game, I drew the doctor card again and the gamemaster chuckled (which kinda gave me away). After I chose who I wanted to save, the gamemaster said "SephiZack, close your eyes" instead of "Doctor, close your eyes" and we had to cancel the game. If we didn't, I would have saved the 1st victim again 3 times in a row after becoming the doctor 3 times in a row.
 
shaneo632

shaneo632

Weekend Planner
Member
Oct 29, 2017
29,077
Wrexham, Wales
I had a random premonition Robert Forster would die while I was watching El Camino. Next day it turned out he had died that evening.
 
TAJ

TAJ

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
12,446
I was in line for tickets to Guns N' Roses/Metallica/Faith No More and they handed out random numbers instead of using the line.
The numbers were from 1 to 9,999. I got 9,999. I waited for another number and got 9,998.
 
CHC

CHC

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,249
When I was in high school I went to Tokyo (from New York) as part of an exchange program. While there, I randomly bumped into a classmate from high school. She was not part of the exchange program, had no family there, and we weren't even in a touristy part of town or at a major attraction. It was just on some random side street outside of the main city. Can't even begin to imagine the odds.
 
N.Domixis

N.Domixis

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,208
CHC said:
When I was in high school I went to Tokyo (from New York) as part of an exchange program. While there, I randomly bumped into a classmate from high school. She was not part of the exchange program, had no family there, and we weren't even in a touristy part of town or at a major attraction. It was just on some random side street outside of the main city. Can't even begin to imagine the odds.
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This happens in movies all the times. Nothing special.
 
Bigwombat

Bigwombat

Banned
Nov 30, 2018
3,416
Came within a centimeter from cutting my femoral artery open when I impaled myself on a wrought iron fleur de le fence in Spain. Only one drop of blood on my pants so I was quite surprised when I pulled my pants down and saw a huge gaping wound. Didn't even feel any pain for some ungodly reason, at least until the next day. It was more stiff than painful though.
I should have definitely died that night.
 
daveo42

daveo42

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,251
Ohio
I got the exact same spy card in a game of Resistance with six other people seven times in a row. The eighth time, we swapped one of the spy cards out with another. I got the new spy card that was swapped out. Probably not that insane, but pretty up there for me personally.
 
Grunty

Grunty

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,505
Gruntilda’s Lair
Years ago before I had a vehicle, I would go grocery shopping and take it home on a bicycle. This particular morning, I needed to make two trips. I get to the register on trip number 1, and my total comes to $42.42. I take the groceries home, return to the store, and purchase more groceries, all of which were different from my first trip. I get to the register and my total was... $42.42. To this day I'm astonished by what the odds would have to be for such a thing to occur.
 
Garrett 2U

Garrett 2U

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,511
When I was around 12 years old, I had an online friend that I played Runescape and Halo with. After a couple years of playing games every day together, we lost contact.

A few years later, I was playing Halo with a different online friend who recently moved to college. In his background I hear "Oh my god, is that Garrett?"

Turns out that my two independent friends were randomly assigned as roommates together at the same college.
 
Seirith

Seirith

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,326
I had a very simple hand surgery in 2015 and ended up with CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). There are less than 200,000 cases per year and is very rare. I lost my last job because of it and I should have never had surgery because I am now worse off with CRPS than I was pre-surgery with a trigger thumb. I also still can't bend my thumb but no one will do any more surgery because of the CRPS.
 
Seirith

Seirith

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,326
Garrett 2U said:
When I was around 12 years old, I had an online friend that I played Runescape and Halo with. After a couple years of playing games every day together, we lost contact.

A few years later, I was playing Halo with a different online friend who recently moved to college. In his background I hear "Oh my god, is that Garrett?"

Turns out that my two independent friends were randomly assigned as roommates together at the same college.
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That is so cool! There are a few people from playing DAoC that I hope to "run" into online someday, we were great friends back when we all played but lost contact after we all stopped playing. I'd love to know how they were doing.
 
divisionbyzorro

divisionbyzorro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,773
It happened to my daughter, not to me, but she has a very rare form of a very rare disease (VGKC Autoimmune Encephalitis).
 
flatearthpandas

flatearthpandas

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,180
Kozmo said:
I'm not sure what the stats are supposed to be, but in my near 40 years of life I've had 3 separate instances of birds pooping on me while out in the streets.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The only time a bird has pooped on me was at my friend's wedding right after i changed into the tux when I was due to give a speech. Not sure the odds and everything ended up okay but was not great timing
 
higemaru

higemaru

Member
Nov 30, 2017
4,122
got seated next to an ex at a nearly sold out 18,000 seat concert. Not a good way to spend $150 let me tell you
 
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