A few months ago, I had a strange feeling that something happened to my grandfather. As he was in the tenth year of his bipass I was very worried. I tried to reach him and couldn't. I left a message. A few days later, he returned my call. Nothing was wrong. He was just out of town.
Another true story. The last time I flew, all the passengers looked strange to me - like something was wrong. I worried greatly that there would be something wrong with the flight, but everything went perfectly. It was one of the smoothest flights I have ever been on.
One of my first jobs was as a cashier in a "Convenient Food Mart" in Syracuse, New York. I also ran the lottery machine. People loved to talk to me every day about how they could FEEL their numbers were going to come in. In six months, hundreds of people felt they were going to win the big state lottery "TONIGHT", but none ever did. There WAS this one lady who hit in a 3-way. I think it paid something like $1000. She was absolutely convinced that she KNEW her numbers were going to come in.
People very selectively remember when events happens that they had a feeling about and easily forget ones that didn't turn out to be true.
JR - you stated that there was a LOT of fighting. You could use that to assess the odds. If you fought every other day, the odds of someone calling you on a day you were fighting three times in a row is 1 in 8.
Or we could say you were fighting every day for a few weeks and that as long as her mom called within a 2 hour time period, that would consitute a coincidence. Then, the odds of her doing that are (2/24)^3 = 1 in 1728. Low but not amazing at all considering how many times 1 in 1728 events DON'T happen in your life. We see the events that do happen but no one says " I went to the grocery store today and didn't see anyone I know."
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12-02-2002
Hybrid Mode
