the.com/likelihood
the quiet math behind every gamble you swear was a sure thing
means The probability or chance that something will happen, weighed as more or less plausible.
from Built from 'likely' plus the noun-making suffix '-hood' — the same '-hood' found in 'childhood' and 'neighborhood,' which descends from Old English 'had,' meaning a state or condition. So 'likelihood' is literally 'the condition of being likely.' 'Likely' itself comes from Old Norse 'líkligr,' related to Old English 'gelíc' ('alike, similar'), the root that also gives us 'like' — the original sense being that something has the appearance or resemblance of truth, of being probable.
- word origin
- From Old English meaning resemblance, not chance
- gambler's trap
- Past odds never alter the next coin flip
- statistics
- Maximum likelihood underpins most machine learning models
- human bias
- People wildly overweight vivid but rare events
monty hall problem — probability puzzle where switching doors increases likelihood of winning from 1/3 to 2/3
birthday paradox — in a group of 23 people, likelihood of two sharing a birthday exceeds 50%
base rate fallacy — medical test 99% accurate but likelihood of actually having disease is only ~9% with 1% prevalence