Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T20:01:31.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Finding the probability of a rare real world event

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2019

John Wiorkowski*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road AD23, Richardson, Texas 75080-3021, USA e-mail: wiorkow@utdallas.edu

Extract

One of the nicer things about growing older is that you tend to find a great deal of pleasure in the little rituals of life. Things like morning coffee or tea, a warm bath, or a glass of good wine at the end of the day. There are some rituals, however, that are not at all enjoyable. Take, for example, the monthly ritual of paying bills. I still do this by cheque, so I need to make sure my bank account balance is sufficient to pay the cheque, write the cheque, and subtract the cheque amount from the account balance. Now there is a little pleasure when one actually adds money to the account balance, but the one time that gives me more than a modicum of joy is when the pence portion of the account balance comes out to be exactly zero. This happens very rarely and unpredictably. As a statistician I became intrigued with trying to find the probability of this event occurring. I did an extensive literature search both in traditional hard copy journals and also online, but I could find no reference to this problem.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Mathematical Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Nicolas, Privault, Understanding Markov chains: examples and applications, Springer (2013).Google Scholar
Rick, Wicklin, The statistics of my grocery bill (2010), available at https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2010/11/12/the-statistics-of-mygrocery-bill.htmlGoogle Scholar