The thing about probability is that sometimes seemingly unbelievably unlikely events are more likely than you’d think.
You know when you meet someone you haven’t seen for years in a really random place like on holiday or something and you both go “Unbelievable! What are the chances?” Well, the chance of you bumping into that particular person at that time in that placeis quite small, but the chance of you bumping into someone you know at some time in some placeis actually quite high. That’s why it’s happened to most people at some point!
You may be aware of the famous question: How many random unrelated people need to be in a group for there to be a better than 50% chance of at least two of them sharing a birthday? Many people immediately guess something like 183 (approx half a year in days) but the answer is actually just 22. This is due to multiplying probabilities together to get the answer.
The case of the interlocking bullets is not exactly the same, but the surprising probability scenario still works, if the assertion that the probability of two bullets fired in battle colliding in this way is 1 billion to one is correct, then the probability of this happening to those two particular soldiers on this occasion would indeed be 1/1,000,000,000. However, the probability of it ever happening to anyone, in any conflict would have to take into account the number of times in history that any two soldiers have shot at pretty much the same time on the same field of battle. It would probably be fair to say that this has happened more than a billion times in history, so let’s assume 1 billion as a conservative estimate.
If you calculate each pair of opposing bullets having a 1/1,000,000,000 chance of colliding midair and interlocking, then after a billion trials, the chances of you getting at least one pair of interlocking bullets is about 0.6321206. Or a bit less than two thirds. So it was actually quite likely to happen. 🤓
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Sorry. Mathematics. I can’t help it. I’m a nerd.
Many people immediately guess something like 183 (approx half a year in days) but the answer is actually just 22. This is due to multiplying probabilities together to get the answer.
The case of the interlocking bullets is not exactly the same, but the surprising probability scenario still works, if the assertion that the probability of two bullets fired in battle colliding in this way is 1 billion to one is correct, then the probability of this happening to those two particular soldiers on this occasion would indeed be 1/1,000,000,000. However, the probability of it ever happening to anyone, in any conflict would have to take into account the number of times in history that any two soldiers have shot at pretty much the same time on the same field of battle. It would probably be fair to say that this has happened more than a billion times in history, so let’s assume 1 billion as a conservative estimate.
So it was actually quite likely to happen.
🤓