PROBABILITIES

In my second blog post (Asteroid strikes, May 11,2013) I talked about the probability of a big asteroid that strikes the earth actually hitting Kalamazoo is less than once in 100,000 over a lifetime of one hundred years.  It was over 50 million years ago that the big one that was part of the disruption leading to the extinction of dinosaurs struck the earth.  The post was to help people understand that such events are probably dropping in frequency, but were an important part of the early history of life selecting for the survival of forms such as the pogonophora to repopulate the post-strike world.

I would never have made that discovery without an almost unbelievable set of coincidences in my life that is most unlikely to be duplicated and may almost be beyond serendipitous discovery in the future if I cannot help my peers understand it.

Calculating the odds

I think it was necessary for me to study a peculiar group of crustaceans in Tasmania (the center of their distribution).  The comparison made with a Michigan species (of a different group) was instrumental for my understanding how longevity and ecology impact evolution of species.  I was the only Fulbrighter at the University of Tasmania that year and probably the only one that had ever studied crustaceans there.
The probability for this is likely less than one in 200,000,000.

The probability of that rare individual also composing a chapter for an invertebrate zoology text book and learning pertinent facts about the pogonophorans is very low.  Perhaps a few dozen biologists have done so in the United States out of several thousand.  That may be about one in a hundred.
Probability of 1 in 200,000,000 times 1 in 100 = 1 in 20,000,000,000.

The probability of being an INTP type of personality and jumping to new topics or studies before fully disseminating the knowledge or topic may be about 1 in 20.  If I had stayed on track I would have pursued things to completion and never have combined the necessary information to understand the evolutionary points I make.
Probability of 1 in 20 times 1 in 20,000,000,000 = 1 in 400,000,000,000.

The probability of having the childhood and later circumstances could be described  but are unique for everyone, even identical twins.  Some of those events may be described later, but it makes me almost certain the chance of someone doing the same is a practical impossibility.  We share a lot, but you will be the only you, just like me.

Joe Engemann     Kalamazoo, Michigan    February 22, 2017