(STACKER) – Millions of Americans buy lottery tickets each year, even though most people know their chances of winning are slim at best. Why do they bother when taking home the grand prize is less likely than dying in a plane crash or being struck by lightning?
Humans often struggle to grasp probability, especially when guessing the odds of things that could happen in their lives. Generally speaking, this deficiency is due to three very human problem-solving crutches: representativeness, availability, and anchoring.
With representativeness, people base assumptions on similarities or overvalue a small sampling as indicative of a larger truth. Availability is based on recency bias or the assumption that because something just happened, it is more likely to happen again. Anchoring is what people do when they lean too heavily into early reference points, such as going to an expensive store where a discounted article of clothing appears inexpensive in comparison to the initial price despite it still being aggressively inflated.
Stacker took the guesswork out of 50 random events to determine how likely they are to happen. We sourced our information from government statistics, scientific articles, and other primary documents. Keep reading to find out why expectant parents shouldn’t count on due dates—and why you should be more worried about dying on your birthday than living to 100 years old.
- Getting struck by lightning
- Winning an Olympic medal
- Being killed in a plane crash
- Having twins
- Dying in a tornado
- Winning the lottery
- Being saved by CPR
- Killed by a meteorite impact
- Finding a four-leaf clover
- Getting audited by the IRS
- Bowling a perfect game
- Living to 100
- Earning a perfect score on the SAT
- Getting your car stolen
- Seeing your congressperson reelected
- Having food poisoning
- Getting into Harvard
- Losing something in the mail
- Becoming a bone marrow donor
- Dying in a shark attack
- Being named Emma or Jacob
- Having trouble hearing
- Becoming an astronaut
- Dying in a car accident
- Graduating from college within six years
- Needing long-term care insurance
- The person next to you being able to read this
- Being ambidextrous
- Dying in a hurricane
- Cracking open a double-yolked egg
- Your house burning down
- Being killed by falling furniture
- Playing for a professional sports team
- Becoming a millionaire
- Death by bees
- Getting lead poisoning
- Someone you know identifies as LGBTQ+
- Dying on your birthday
- Being born with extra fingers or toes
- Being involved in a mass shooting
- Catching a Shiny Pokemon
- That your birth control fails
- Catching a foul ball
- Being dealt a royal flush
- Being born on leap day
- Keeping your wisdom teeth
- That there is alien life
- Giving birth on your due date
- Being born
- Creating a perfect March Madness bracket
