Odds
The odds in favor of an event or a proposition are the ratio of the probability that an event will happen to the probability that it will not happen. For example, the odds that a randomly chosen day of the week is a Sunday are one to six, which is sometimes written 1:6.
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Famous quotes containing the word odds:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear- headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)