What Are the Odds??

Of a V-Tail Bonanza landing atop ANOTHER V-Tail Bonanza?

freenewmexican.com/news/51744.html

-“Not good.”

-“You mean not good, like one out of a hundred?”

-“I’d say more like one out of a million.”

-“So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”

Thank-you Mr. Christmas.

Two thoughts:

  1. (Easy Joke) Where did you think baby airplanes came from?

  2. (From Left Field) Wonder what the pilot did wrong to generate the Nickelhydroxid precipitate.

Just trying to imagine the thoughts of the pilot of the top plane as he was trying to land…

The plane goes “ka-chunk”…

Pilot thinks, “I’m a little high for touchdown, and it’s not supposed to sound like that… Hmmmmm… the plane is leaning to the right - HEY - It’s tipping over!! Whoa Better go around! Hmmmm - throttle doesn’t work… what’s wrong with my airplane…?”

http://www.filmica.com/garajekubrick/archivos/landing_accident.jpg

about the same odds as this??? :wink:

This was the image I was looking for. Two RCAF Avro Anson.

100%! :laughing:

Imagine the thoughts of the pilot on the bottom plane as the world comes crashing in on him. :smiley:

Allen

Los Alamitos Traffic = bonanza 5369E = 2 mile final runway X

Bonanza XXXX - whistling along, minding his own business, doing the checklist, head in theclouds.

Los Alamitos Traffic, Bo 69E, mile final, Runway X, Los Alamitos, Full stop.

Looks to me like the plane on the bottom had the right of way - lower and closer the runway!

Finally, a chance to dredge up an old rivalry…

Odds are good. Bo drivers all think the rest of us will give them right of way so they don’t pay attention to the rest of us.

Luckily, the Mooneys always get there first 8)

Thoughts of the pilot on the bottom plane:
“W.T.F.???” :open_mouth:

Yeah, the bottom plane. He’d be flying dumb and happy coming down for a landing and never see what was coming. Thus the world crashing in on him.

What would your thought be if some wheels crashed through your cabin roof without any clue of what’s to come?

Yes, the bottom plane.

Allen

About the same as the odds of the Ohio Lottery’s “Pick 4” game coming up 4239 about half an hour after the OSU Buckeyes beat Michigan by a score of…42-39. :open_mouth: 98% of the winners from Saturday night’s drawing purchased their tickets between 7:15 (end of the game) and 7:35, which is the cutoff for the 7:45 drawing.

Odds of a pick 4 are 1 in 10,000 (no matter what time frame). I would assume that the odds against the piggy back landing of 2 V-tailed bonanzas are much greater than that.

Incidently, GO BUCKS!

Correct, they’re 1 in 10,000 on ANY GIVEN DAY, which says that the they should be picked once every 30 years or so (taking into account that they don’t draw on Sundays). The chances of them coming up the same day as an OSU score (the score of an OSU-Michigan game nonetheless) seem unimaginable.

Technically, there are infinite possibilities regarding the score of the game. Realistically, let’s say that either team could have scored up to…let’s say 60 pts. Factoring in the other team’s possible score (0-60), the chances of someone predicting the score at random are 1 in 3721 (61x61). The chances of the lottery AND the score being what they were would technically be somewhere around 1 in 37,210,000.

I second your “GO BUCKS!” :smiley:
Getting back to aviation, it’ll be interesting to see all the charters from CMH to Arizona in early January. I know that in January of '03 (OSU’s last national title) United flew in at least one 777 to charter fans to Tempe for the Fiesta Bowl (and there were many more charters as well).

That’s an interesting concept of statistics, Planeaholic, but I see it differently.

First, football scores are a Gaussian distribution, not a linear distribution. What you’re saying is that the odds of both teams scoring over 30 points each is just the same as those of neither team scoring over 30 points. In fact, because either team in your case could score >30 at a 50% chance, the probability that neither would score >30 is a mere 25%. Sorry, but the scores each week clearly show that’s wrong. At a mere guess, I’d suggest that the odds that neither team scores >30 is about 66.67%

What about the Pick 4? I assume that’s 4 numbers picked seaparately without repetition. Odds that the first digit is 0, 1, or 2 is 30%. Odds that the third digit is 0, 1, or 2 but not equal to the first digit is 20%. Second and fourth digits don’t count. Odds that both 1st and 3rd digits are less than 3 = .30 x .20 = .06 = 6%.

What about the odds that both the football score and the Pick 4 are under 30-30 and 3000, respectively. It looks like 2/3 x 3/10 = 2/10 = 20%. (The football odds are from my ‘guess’ odds of 66.67% above.) That’s hardly a rarity.

As far as the odds that the Pick 4 exactly matches any football score, those are the same odds that the Pick 4 matches any specified number, exactly 1 in 10,000. Your 1 in 37 million number has flown out the window.

What you were trying to estimate is the odds, before the lottery draw and before the kickoff, that both sets of numbers would end up at “4239”. That, I agree, is FAR more unlikely. However, the real question should be what are the odds that the Pick 4 will equal the football score whatever that is. Correct answer: 1 in 10,000 [if repeat numbers are allowed in Pick 4; otherwise some scores, like 22-22, are impossible to match].

Btw, Planeaholic, I’m not posting this to be a snotty showoff in what I know about statistics. I just got to think about it and it became a interesting number exercise. The only difference between your answer and mine is that we started off with different assumptions about the problem. I’m glad you took a stab at it and posted it. It was thought-provoking.

98% of the winners bought there tickets AFTER the game, when the chances of the score being 42 to 39 was 100%. At that point, the odds of those number coming up were the sames as any other legal sequence of numbers. The guy who bought the ticket BEFORE the game (and choose 42-39 on the office pool) Now I agree that was a guy (or gal) who beat the odds!

Interesting figures. Thanks for clearing that up…I think. I understand what you’re saying. ANY score (being four digits) has a 1 in 10,000 chance of being drawn on that day.
As far as 98% of the people buying the winning tickets after the game, I understand that they bought the tickets with that in mind, and I’m not astonished that there were so many winners because of the score. I’m just in awe of the fact that these random numbers happened to come up on the same day as such a huge win. (Or, do you suppose the lottery rigged the game just to rub salt in old Blue’s wounds?? :smiling_imp: )

I don’t know about any salt in the wounds, but we could start a rumor that the winning tickets were paid for with a bunch of rare coins!