Here's an easy game. Pick a random number between 1 and 10. No, not the rating of your favorite TV show. Just a random number. Run the numbers through your head and pick one. Got it? Don't read further until you settle on a number.
Your number is most likely 3 or 7.
We don't want to pick 1 or 10 since those we feel are outliers. And 5 is definitely not random since it is right in the middle. So some number greater than 1 and less than 5 or a number greater than 5 or less than 10 sounds like a reasonably random number. 2, 4, 6, or 9 may not be random enough since they are so close to the middel and extreme values. So we pick 3 or 7.
Of course in reality ALL numbers are equally random.
Us humans generally do not do a very good job picking random numbers nor ascertaining probabilities or likely events for any situation beyond the most simple scenarios using our intuition or common sense alone.
Thus many probability problems that apply to very common scenarios become paradoxical and fun to explore!
We will explore more of these paradoxes in this blog.
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