Never Tell Me The Odds

Every time we leave our homes, we face risks. If you are like me and you frequently bring your toaster into the bathroom in order to toast bagels while in the tub, you also incur significant risks while inside your home. But there is nothing better than a perfectly toasted bagel, so the reward justifies the risk.

Similarly, the convenience of being able to travel long distances in short periods of time justifies the risk associated with using any given mode of transportation. As a matter of fact, many people prefer to not even think of the risks when they, say, get in a car or mount their bike so as not to cause themselves unnecessary anxiety. Some, though, take comfort in the fact that the one-year odds of dying in a plane crash, for instance, are somewhere between 1 in 600,000 and 1 in 2,000,000 depending on the source you use.

So what is my point? On Wednesday night, the Tampa Bay Rays and the St. Louis Cardinals completed Wild Card comebacks for which the joint probability was 1 in 250,000, according to the brilliant actuarial minds over at Beyond the Box Score. We watched the whole thing unfold right before our eyes.

Then, out of curiosity I started doing some hardcore googling and learned that my chance of dying in a catastrophic train accident is roughly equal to the odds that both the Rays and the Cardinals would make the playoffs. As exciting as it was to watch both of these teams make the playoffs, there is also something unsettling about it. For if the Cardinals and the Rays could both make the playoffs, against all odds, then who is to say that when I get on the subway today I won’t be killed in a terrible crash?

Of course this is ridiculous. In this variety of confirmation bias, the fact that the Rays and the Cardinals making the playoffs and being killed by in a train crash have nothing to do with each other is not even relevant. All that matters is that one extremely unlikely thing happened so therefore in my mind I inflate the probability that another extremely unlikely thing will happen.

In the end, I find solace in the reality that things as unlikely as being killed in a train crash or the Rays and the Cardinals making the playoffs are happening all of the time. We may not see them and we may not care about them, and that is exactly the point. The reason the Rays and Cardinals making the playoffs is special is because it’s an outcome that humans have deemed important and exciting (good?) in a game that humans have created. The consummation of these two incredible comebacks on Wednesday night should serve as a strong counterpoint to those who argue against the use of non-traditional stats in sports. The fact that we can estimate the odds only serves to enhance our understanding of what happened and make it seem more thrilling. At the same time, a number of Braves fans and Red Sox fans probably feel as if they have been hit by a train. Everything is relative.

Anyway, all of this is just to say: HOLY CRAP.