What are odds?
Odds are the likelihood of a thing occurring rather than not occurring
Probability is a measure of how likely it is that some event will occur
Odds = Probability / (1-Probability)
In common language, these numbers are often expressed as fractions or percentages, and must be converted to real number form to perform calculations with them.
For example, if two events are equally likely, such as a flipped coin landing heads-up or tails-up, we express the probability of each event as "1 in 2" or "50%" or "1/2", where the numerator (The term above the fraction bar in a fraction) of the fraction is the relative likelihood of the target event and the denominator (The term below the fraction bar in a fraction) is the total of relative likelihoods for all events
e.g. if the Probability of having a Heart Attack is 8 in a 100 (in other words 0.08 or 8.00%) then the Odds of having a Heart attack is 0.08 / (1-0.08) = 0.08 / 0.92 = 0.0869 = 8.69%
Probability comes from the Latin probare (to prove, or to test), the word probable means roughly "likely to occur" in the case of possible future occurences, or "likely to be true" in the case of inferences from evidence. While mathematicians and scientists all agree on how to calculate the probability of certain events and how to use those calculations in certain ways, there is considerable disagreement on what the numbers mean in reality.
The idea is most often broken into two concepts: aleatory probability, which represents the likelihood of future events whose occurence is governed by some random physical phenomenon like tossing dice or spinning a wheel; and epistemic probability, which represents our uncertainty of belief about past events that either did or did not occur, or uncertainty about the causes of future events.
The latter, for example, is what we are talking about when we say that it is "probable" that a certain suspect committed a crime based on the evidence presented. It is an open question whether aleatory probability is reducible to epistemic probability based on our inability to precisely predict every force that might affect the roll of a die, or whether such uncertainties exist in the nature of reality itself
Odds of getting a hole in one: 5,000 to 1
Odds of winning an Olympic medal: 662,000 to 1
Odds of injury from shaving: 6,585 to 1
Odds of injury from using a chain saw: 4,464 to 1
Odds of injury from mowing the lawn: 3,623 to 1
Odds of fatally slipping in bath or shower: 2,232 to 1
Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1
Odds of being killed on a 5-mile bus trip: 500,000,000 to 1
Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1
Odds of being murdered: 18,000 to 1
Odds of getting away with murder: 2 to 1
Odds of being the victim of serious crime in your lifetime: 20 to 1
Odds of dating a supermodel: 88,000 to 1
Odds of being audited by the IRS: 175 to 1
Odds of having your identity stolen: 200 to 1
Odds of finding a four-leaf clover on first try: 10,000 to 1
Odds of striking it rich on Antiques Road Show: 60,000 to 1
Odds of a meteor landing on your house: 182,138,880,000,000 to 1
Odds of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000
Odds of getting prostate cancer: 1 in 6
Odds of getting breast cancer: 1 in 9
Odds of getting colon / rectal cancer: 1 in 26
Odds of having a stroke: 1 in 6
Odds of dying from heart disease: 1 in 3
Did you know
41% of New Zealanders have one child,
36% have two children and 23% have more than two children
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