And What Are the Chances of That?

What are the chances I will read about two people with the same surname, Boettcher, on the same day—today—in two very different sections of the same newspaper, The New York Times? I'll let the very serious readers of the book 'Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence' by Jospeh Mazur try and figure it out.

In case you're just awakening from a coma, you should know by now there is a new champ on 'Jeopardy,' Emma Boettcher, who in last night's telecast unseated the reigning champion James Holzhauer.

James Holzhauer was no ordinary champion. He won for 32 straight evenings, nearly setting the all-time record for money won in non-tournament games. Along the way, James set records for money won per game several times, breaking his own single game records.

And due to the advance taping of the show, the episode that just aired was filmed on March 12th, showing the end of James's reign before the start of his streak was aired. Thus, Emma Boettcher was unaware on March 12th that  she was dethroning a 32 consecutive game winner, all because his winning streak had yet to be aired at the time.

If any of this might sound confusing, it's all true. Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity and the affect of gravity (or TV taping schedules) on elapsed time might need studying. Or not.

At least for now, that we publicly know, Emma is the new 'Jeopardy' champion, Her story is everywhere.

And where did I read of the second occurrence of the name Boettcher today? In the obits section, where else?

Donald M. Fraser, 95, who exposed a 'Koreagate' plot to buy political influence in the late 1970s has passed away. Fraser, is not Boettcher, but a 1980s book 'Gifts of Deceit' about the Korean scandals is by a Boettcher, a Robert Boetttcher, and is mentioned prominently in the obituary.

Are Emma and Robert somehow related? I have no idea. But if I understand some of the discussions of probability in Mr. Mazur's book correctly, reading about them on the same day was eventually guaranteed.

Sure, today is the day I read their names on the same day in the same newspaper. So this is a coincidence, no? Well...

Mr. Mazur points out that when such events happen—and these types of things happen all the time to people—we tend to think of only the one day that it does happen. We're not counting all the days that have proceeded it when it didn't happen. We're thinking it's a 1-out-of-1 occurrence, when it's actually a one in probably many million occurrences. Given enough chances for it to happen and it didn't happen, sharpens the long odds that it's going to happen sometime.

Thus. if I've been reading the newspaper every day for 58 years, 365 times a year, there have been 21,170 chances so far that two similar names should appear on the same day. Given the population of names, the chances of Boettcher appearing on the same day to my knowledge just means that it was bound to finally happen.

I should have known it all along.

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