What Are the Chances I Don’t Poke My Own Eyes Out Today?

Newsday did a scrappy but interesting little comparison today—how bowling two back-to-back perfect bowling games stacks up against these other things. (I don’t know where they got these numbers from, or why they think it’s okay to spell every other word wrong (fixed here). Somebody needs to hire a copy editor over there. But I’m just venting.)

(And oh yeah, 1 in 2 stay married for a lifetime? Where’d they get these numbers from? 1952?)


1 in 2 Staying married for a lifetime

1 in 10 Applying and getting into Harvard or Yale

1 in 90 Having twins

1 in 130 Being audited by the IRS

1 in 250 Giving birth to a genius

1 in 3,000 Being struck by lightning in your lifetime

1 in 10,700 Pitching a perfect Major League game

1 in 33,000 Hitting a hole-in-one in golf

1 in 56,364 Bowling back-to-back perfect games

1 in 649,740 Being dealt a royal flush in poker

1 in 80.1 million Matching all six Powerball numbers

1 in 182 trillion Having a meteor land on your house