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Quantum Pings Library
The law of truly large numbers
- Type
- Concept
- By
- Persi Diaconis & Frederick Mosteller (1989)
- Publisher
- Statistics
- Source
- Wikipedia ↗
- Published
- 1989
With a large enough number of events, even very rare ones become certain to happen. A one-in-a-million event happens to about eight people every day in the United States.
Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller formalized the "law of truly large numbers" in their 1989 paper on studying coincidences: with enough opportunities, even wildly improbable events become not just possible but near-certain. A one-in-a-million event happens to thousands of people every single day.
This is the mathematician's silver bullet against the uncanny. Most "impossible" coincidences are not only expected but inevitable once you count all the chances for them to occur. The law does not explain every reported case — the authors themselves conceded some coincidences resist easy accounting — but it reframes the default question from "how is this possible?" to "why wouldn't this happen?"
The meaning
The law explains ordinary coincidence, but some argue it cannot explain the specific, personally meaningful ones that arrive exactly when needed.
The skeptic
This is the mathematician's silver bullet: most "impossible" coincidences are not only possible but expected, once you count all the opportunities for them.
About the source
Harvard statisticians who formalized why, with enough opportunities, astonishing coincidences are statistically guaranteed.
Key takeaways
- Rare events become near-certain with enough trials.
- A one-in-a-million event happens to thousands of people every day.
- Coined and formalized by Diaconis and Mosteller in their 1989 paper on coincidences.