In the light of the octopus
In case you missed out on the most popular non-footballing story of the World Cup, an octopus called Paul, from Germany, became world famous for predicting Germany’s results and the result of the final with a 100% accuracy rate. The talented mollusc carried out his predictions by eating a mussel placed in a box decorated with the flag of the team he thought would win. Using his method he foresaw a remarkable series of results, including a couple (Germany’s freak loss to Serbia, for example) which very few humans would have predicted. Indeed, had the octopus been involved in the Watson Prediction World Cup alongside my siblings and Emily’s, I would not now be sitting here as Champion.
It was announced the other day that the visionary octopus would now be retiring, which means we can’t have the fun ruined by him starting to get them wrong, but also robs us of the chance to see even more bizarre statistics unfold. I was thinking about the whole business while shopping for fruit. Here is what I thought.
Firstly, not one of us believes that an octopus can possess psychic powers, and very few of us, I should think, even believe a human can. Without wanting to insult the prescient octoped, I doubt that he followed the competition with full understanding. Anyone who tried to make a case that this funny little story is evidence of supernatural goings-on would be laughed out of town. We’re all well-trained rationalists these days and we don’t think there are acts of God or telepathic beings in the sea. However, the world is a very odd place, and what we should learn in the light of the octopus’s performance is that although blatantly unscientific things shouldn’t be believed in, the world quite often behaves in a way so bonkers that it is close to being unscientific itself, if you see what I mean.
The chances of the octopus getting it right were 50/50 each time, so the chance of him calling all seven matches accurately was, I reckon, 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 and so on. I could be wrong about this (I got a B at GSCE, couldn’t do graphs). But expressed as a percentage I imagine the statistical possibility would be somewhere the wrong side of 0.1%. Now, most things which had a 0.1% chance of happening, you would be virtually certain you could dismiss as impossible. I’ve had operations where there was a 0.1% chance of something going wrong, and not lost any sleep to the idea at all. If someone told you that your train would run on time provided that an octopus was able to forecast the results of seven football matches in a row, you would immediately start making alternative travel arrangements. If someone bet you a million quid that seven 50/50 events would fall into place consecutively, you’d most likely take the bet.
And more relevantly to me – if the plot of a novel depended on a less-than-one-in-100 chance, people would accuse you of contrivance. They’d say it was ‘unrealistic’. The fact is, life is fairly often unrealistic. Science can’t measure the tendency of the universe to throw you a genuine curveball.
How can this help us be optimistic? Quite simply, next time you’re hoping for something highly unlikely to happen, think of the octopus and remember that logic is all very well, but the laws of nature often don’t see any reason to conform to it.
And on that note: after my boast of having eaten a Chomp bar with Dawn French, against any of my expectations, one Commenter suggested that we set other doing-things-with-celebs targets, and I see if I can stretch my new-found optimism to imagine them happening, and then try to actually do them. His idea was ‘juggling with Alexei Sayle’. I’m going to come out and say I think I CAN do that at some point over the next ten years. I’m also going to nominate a handful of similar targets:
-Singing with Paula Radcliffe
-Eating sandwiches with Steve Coogan
-Playing a board game with Adrian and Christine, formerly of the One Show.
Suggest similar doing-stuff achievements and I’ll decide which of them are within the reach of my optimism, while still being just about as realistic. And feel free to set them for yourself as well. Anything is possible, if I can eat cheap chocolate with Dawn and a creature without the power of speech can know more about football than me, my brother and my dad put together.
Posted by LollyPolly on July 31, 2010
Obvs, 1st, less tipsy, comment, got lost in previous tipsy key pad pressing…that resulted in loss of more intelligent musings…just to confirm (I’m really clever really, I am) OK……………..night x
Posted by LollyPolly on July 31, 2010
Having been at the Reggie Watts (awesome man!) gig, with Shell & Simone & Kate yesteday evening time, I feel I have to “fourth” the Reggie/Mark Meow Meow cat jam suggestion! My judgement may be slightly impaired by a bottle of Shiraz & 6 Disarannos but I’m feeling quietly confident that this is a pretty good idea (I commented, far more eloquently, in my 1st, less tipsy, comment, but hope you’ll excuse me you lovely strangers/friendly people)
ps. Very much hope Lil’ Kit is feeling brighter x x
Lolly (Laura) x
Posted by Kate W on July 30, 2010
Meow meow duet thirded – that would be hilarious. Highly unlikely to happen naturally, but not all that difficult to arrange…. G’wan!
Posted by Shell on July 30, 2010
What Simone said: “Last night I went to see Reggie Watts. One of his songs is about cats and the chorus is, basically, meows. It reminded me of your ‘Cats’ routine.
It would be so cool if you did a “meow meow” duet/jam with him.”
I was there too – hilarious and brilliant show by Reggie and Simone and I ‘decided’ post show, over tea and jaffa cakes, that this was a MUST SEE Jam/duet and that we’d add it to this blog.
Whadda you reckon? What are the chances? Go on…add it to the list please… start the process…
By the way one of your remarks made me consider for a moment that quite often in this life of mine I have /really/ wished for or hoped for something /highly unlikely/ to happen …and it HAS!
If you choose this – we have (just under) 10 years so I’M optimistic!
x
Posted by Simone on July 30, 2010
Last night I went to see Reggie Watts. One of his songs is about cats and the chorus is, basically, meows. It reminded me of your ‘Cats’ routine.
It would be so cool if you did a “meow meow” duet/jam with him.
Posted by David Board on July 28, 2010
The impact of these ‘one-in-a-million’ events depends very much so on the nature of the events themselves.
Let us remember that there are 6 billion or so people on the Earth. If someone were to say to you, ‘there is a one-in-a-million change of any individual spontanouely combusting in any one day’, when you would probably feel pretty safe and dismiss the risk as neglible. However, this would mean that 6000 people in the world would randomly alight EVERY DAY.
Moreover, considering an average westerner might expect to die of old age after 27375 days of life, then (I think… I’m estimating here… the actual maths involves numbers too big/small for my calculator) 1 in every 38 people could expect to spontanouely combust at some point during their life.
Posted by Heather on July 27, 2010
I don’t care if you do nothing else, as long as you drink Twinings with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Greatest suggestion ever.
Of course, if you achieved all of the above mentioned suggestions, you would surely be granted “legendary” status by all. Go on, go for it.
My own additional suggestion would be that you might like to try going on a motorbike ride with Ewan McGregor. Whether you ride separately, or on the back of his bike, I will leave entirely up to the two of you to decide.
Posted by Hannah Mae on July 26, 2010
I love all of these suggestions, especially the one about sharing a pot of Twinings with Fry and Laurie. That has to happen. Reckon I could join you?
I’m inspired to compile a similar list. If I were to cunningly put ‘go to the pub with Mark Watson’ at the top, is that likely to work? I’m doubtful but, in keeping with this blog, will try to remain optimistic.
I hope Kit is ok and that you’re not too horribly exhausted.
Posted by Someone on July 26, 2010
Yay MusicalLottie! This is definitely now going to happen. ‘Citin.
Posted by Ray Blake on July 26, 2010
Could you yodel with Frank Lampard?
How about playing dominoes with Prof Brian Cox?
Or voting for X-factor acts with Tony Benn?
Posted by Rachael on July 26, 2010
Do the routine to ‘let’s get ready to rumble’ with ant and dec.
I finished reading Eleven today, this has made me sad because I feel like I spent the last few days hanging out with my new friends Xavier and Co. and now I am never to see them again. It was an excellant few days though so thanks for writing a great book. I almost want to lose my memory just I can read it for the first time all over again.
Posted by MusicalLottie on July 26, 2010
OH I like the idea of you having a cup of English tea (which could only be Twinings – start thinking about which one now; it could take you just under ten years to decide … ) with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. You will have an audience of two!
Playing snooker with Gareth Malone
Posted by Someone on July 26, 2010
Have a cup of English tea with both Stephen Fry AND Hugh Laurie all at once. Oh that’d be brilliant… then I could come along too!! No, I think I’d definitely faint. Ah but’d be worth it.
OR go trampolining/farming (interchangeable, yes?) with The Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. Again… I’d be there. In a creepy way
.
(I used to think Paul was a virtual computer-generated ‘octopus’ that they fed actual statistics into as opposed to a real one who’s just hungry. That’s just what my brain decided was the most rational explanation behind ‘Sky has got an octopus that predicts football scores’. But apparently I’M the one who’s lost the plot…)
Posted by Paul on July 26, 2010
The comparison with storytelling is a good one (and I’m sure you appreciate my approval!). I get the feeling sport talk is shied away from a bit here, but if you’ll indulge me for a moment, the sheer ‘non-likelihood’ of something happening is part of the appeal.
There was a European rugby match a few years ago that got settled with the last kick of the game; the guy sent the ball sailing toward goal from his own half, it hit the cross-bar and nonchalantly bounced off onto the other side, thus scoring the points needed to win. Now, if you tried to script a rugby match, or turn rugby into a WWE wrestling-style contrivance, you’d be labelled as a fool to write in something similar happening. But it did happen, and that’s brilliant.
Maybe I’m taking the notion of small probabilities too far, but think of all the things that have had to happen to get us all to the various points we’re at in life so far (and hopefully good points at that). I often come back to the fact that my parents wanted me to go to different schools, and occasionally (usually when I’m with my friends and appreciating how lucky I was to find them) end up pondering how things might have turned out if the other path had been taken.
Hmm. Reading that back, I suspect in trying to offer a slightly different perspective I’ve just said exactly the same thing as you were getting at anyway. Oh well!
Posted by Lydia on July 26, 2010
Bungee jump with Ronnie Corbett. Why that is the first thing that popped into my head I don’t know. But there we go.
Posted by JontyLarr on July 26, 2010
Hang out with the fella who suggested this ridiculous game when he comes to watch you at the Manchester Apollo later in the year?
Posted by Katie on July 26, 2010
Since I know nothing about statistics, I’m just going to add:
Play Jenga with Jarvis Cocker
…and be off.
Posted by Madeleine on July 26, 2010
Reminds me of the Tim Minchin bit (horrendously paraphrasing) “To call a one in a million event a miracle is to seriously underestimate the amount of “things” that happen…. Maths…”
Although this whole octopus thing blew my mind a little bit, untill they said the thing about the stripes on the flag “HA! THAT’S RIGHT! He’s not psychic, he just likes bright colours!!!” I grabbed onto that rational explaination and held tight.
Anything that might make people think twice before eating octopus is cool by me. They’re smarter than dolphins you know, and they love soccer!
Exchange plesantaries with James Mccavoy (this shouldn’t be too hard, he seems very pleasant).
Posted by Alistair on July 26, 2010
There is nothing unusual about spotting coincedences after they happen, there millions apon millions of things happening that if alligned in certain ways would peak our interest, some of them will happen.
Posted by Aislinn on July 26, 2010
I like Ivan. He sounds funny.
Also: After writing that my life achievement was to befriend you and then four days later it sort of ACTUALLY happening, I’d like to think eating sandwiches with Steve Coogan is definitely achievable.
I’m going to use a Basden song lyric and suggest you try being on a bus/in a shop/in a lift with Richard Madeley.
Posted by Maddie on July 26, 2010
Ooo! Ooo!
How about…:
Ponder the finer details of celery with Chris Moyles
Go for ice cream with Duncan Bannatyne
Erect a garden shed with Jonathan Ross and
Dance the tango in full gear with Tim Minchin (Entirely possible!)
You have just under ten years, GO!
Hehe xx
Posted by Ivan on July 26, 2010
When i say “were” run under control conditions, I mean “weren’t”.
It’s this new language thing i’m not trying.
Posted by Ivan on July 26, 2010
I don’t want to put a dampner on things, but I have a feeling that Paul skewed the odds a bit since he tended to pick the redder flag. So he picked Germany a lot (lots of red) and then Spain over Germany (even more red). This might not be true, but I’m pretty sure Paul’s tests were run under control conditions so there could’ve been hundreds of problems. Maybe he just always went right, which was normally Germany, and Germany tend to win so he got it right a majority of the time.
For euro ’08, Paul picked Germany every time. He was right in every case but one.
Oh, and teaching the euphonium to Barry Chuckle.
Posted by Phill on July 26, 2010
The thing with unlikely events is… they happen all the time. It’s a big world we live in. How many times have you heard the phrase “it’s a small world” used? I think if we knew just how many of the people we come into contact with have connections with us we’d be amazed. That’s just one example.
On a planet with six billion people on it, I think it would be even more amazing if coincidences didn’t happen.
Now, if only there were some way of getting these coincidences to work in my favour…
Posted by DeborahF on July 26, 2010
Even I who skilfully avoided watching any of the World Cup matches heard about this. I can’t help on working out the actual probability of this happening – GCSE Maths is a distant memory – about 16 years ago
At least it gave the UK press something interesting to write about – I heard the actual England team’s performance was dire
Posted by Jamie/James on July 26, 2010
My TYSIC is a simplified version of this! Though I’m still on about 3 points. I’ll add this to some of my bonus celebrities…so mine are:
1. Eating risotto with Imogen Heap
2. Playing Croquet with Tim Minchin
3. Playing Rock, Paper, scissors with Judi Dench.
I’d also like to play No More Women with Tim Key. I think I can take him.
Posted by Ben Draper on July 26, 2010
0.8%, sorry
Matthew; The result of the match is independent of the Octopus picking the clam, therefore we can regard one clam as being correct and the other clam as being incorrect; you could replace the countries flags with a tick and a cross. Paul therefore has a 50% chance of picking the correct clam.
With regard to your second point are you talking about determinism? In the Matrix, Morpheus says “what happened happened and couldn’t happen any other way” which I think is a pretty neat explanation of determinism.
Whilst this is perfectly logical, you can counteract the argument by carefully defining what you mean by the probability of an event, in this case “the likelihood that if the experiment were to be repeated, you would get the same outcome”. You could argue that by carrying out the psychic prediction you were measuring the results from the very first match and that there was an expectation for the octopus to correctly predict the results.
I don’t mean to be contrary but I can be a massive pedant sometimes, especially with maths.
Posted by Ben Draper on July 26, 2010
The odds of predicting a 50/50 event 7 times in a row is 1/128, so about 0.6% The Octopus also predicted over 70% of something else, I remember which made it even more special.
I once incorrectly guessed the toss of a coin 10 times in a row (1/1024) but for the last few I was trying to get them wrong (I’m not sure if this is strictly possible by the laws of logic).
I also saw Pete Burns the other day. If anyone has “Go shopping with Pete Burns” then I have done that. And 5 minutes before that I achieved “Walk along Kings Road with Bob Geldof”. I know you don’t care but I like telling people.
What a life I lead, eh?
Posted by Alot of rach[a]els on July 26, 2010
I enjoyed paul’s predictions, it added a nice touch to the world cup.
Also loving eveyones ideas for celebs.
Have a doughnut with Rolf harris
Play darts with Paul o’grady
Play rock band with juliette lewis
Have a discussion with Stephen fry (when I can think of one worthy)
Posted by Heather Jones on July 26, 2010
Statistically unlikely things do happen sometimes…just not very often. Since luck is truly random, sometimes the pattern can look anything but random – cos that’s how random works! And in that sense science CAN measure the tendency (or probability) of the universe. If something is improbable, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible – in fact it is more likely to mean that it WILL eventually happen than not (even so, I really don’t think the infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters eventually coming up with a Shakespearean play is very a convincing scenario)
Does anyone remember that fascinating programme on probability Derren Brown did? He flipped a coin 10 times in a row (or some high number like that) and got 10 heads in a row? In the ‘here’s how we did it’ section at the end, it transpired they just kept filming and filming and filming for something like 9 hours or more until, by sheer chance, they managed to get a run of sufficient heads all in a row! They then just cut out all the unsuccessful attempts and it looked spookily amazing.
We all know it’s incredibly unlikely that any one of us will millions in the lottery – and yet every week SOMEONE wins – someone beats the odds every single time (except when there’s a roll-over). ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it’ as the slogan goes (I don’t bother buying a ticket any more, mind you, but I do lots of other things in hopes of sometimes being lucky.
I was lucky recently – I won a really fab prize at my local church’s summer fete last month. It’s a night for two people, plus dinner and wine, at a lovely posh hotel up in central London. I’m planning to treat my husband to a special wedding anniversary celebration at the end of Aug/beginning of September.
And do you know what the luckiest thing of all was? There was one winner ahead of me, who had first choice of any of the prizes. Her friend was on the phone to her, describing all the top prizes and asking her which one she wanted to pick. She chose the envelope with £100 cash. So she didn’t even WANT the much more valuable prize! (both in my eyes and in hard-nosed monetary terms)
Mind you, all this talk of unlikely things happening won’t really help you to overcome your fear of being struck by lightening, will it, Mark?
Posted by Ally on July 26, 2010
I hadn’t actually heard the full story behind the octopus, I’d be more impressed if it had correctly predicted the outcome of every match in the World Cup.
I don’t have any ideas for the celebrity challenge, but I think that the previous commenter’s ideas more than make up for my lack of them.
Posted by Josh on July 26, 2010
That should have said “go”
oh deary me
Posted by Juliet on July 26, 2010
“The fact is, life is fairly often unrealistic. Science can’t measure the tendency of the universe to throw you a genuine curveball.”
Totally right, I think scientists’ obsession with foreseeing every single natural event is quite pathetic. I wanted to be a scientist, I changed my mind a few months ago (I think I’m gonna go with Literature).
You could add to you list coming to Argentina, and I’m gonna try to get some of my work published in the next ten years, what do you think?
Posted by Josh on July 26, 2010
That should have said “…figure for the oneS predicted after the…”
obviously
Gone on a Rollercoaster with John Major
Posted by Josh on July 26, 2010
Paul has got it wrong many many times. He’s been predicting Germany’s results for years and only when he got a good run of hits did they start reporting it. What news is a non-psychic octopus? When you take this into account, the real figure for the one predicted after the reporting is 25% I think.
And now the news where you are:
Fix Andrew Marr’s toaster
Partake in a lucky dip with Ricky Martin
Do the weekly shop with Natasha Kaplinski
Have a race with Charlie from Busted
Inflate a dinghy with Nick Park (Creator of Wallace and Gromit)
Blow bubbles with Tim Henman
Have a water fight with Yvette Fielding
Tickle Rick Wakeman
Have your hiccups cured by Trisha
Talk politics with Jamie Oliver
Go on a brewery tour with Sue Barker
Posted by Rachel Winter on July 26, 2010
I have queued behind Steve Coogan and ordered a banana milk, and then sat in the same refectory/cafe as him – so I’ve almost beaten you to it, kind of!
How about buying Brian Blessed a drink?
Or going on a boating lake with jon snow?
Posted by Matthew on July 26, 2010
(Not that any of this should detract from Mark’s point – in fact, anything but, 1 in a hundred / 1 in a million events happen all the time, and can happen to any of us!)
Posted by Matthew on July 26, 2010
Several problem with this maths wise:
1.) Whilst Paul’s choice was a 50/50 split each time, the probability of the actual occurrence never was. I know very little about football yet I know that say in a match of Man United say versus Leyton Orient, Man united have much better than a 50% chance of winning. Also Paul for the first few matches hurt himself massively by ignoring the chance of a draw completely!
2.) If we ignore this and pretend paul was predicting a coin toss (0.5 either way), we hit our first problem, paul didn’t predict all these results in advance so the maths isn’t how you suggest at all Mark I am afraid…
First match: 0.5 chance,
2nd Match: Paul was already right about the first match, so it’s a 0.5 chance again.
3rd Match: Paul had already been right about the previous, and now has a 0.5 chance again
Or to put it another way, if someone had just tossed 9 heads in a row you might think – it has to be a tails, it’s tails turn – or – it’s got to be heads, it’s been heads 9 times now – but you’d be wrong either way, it’s 0.5, it’s independent of the previous event.
If someone had said in advance Paul will get them all right that would be a 0.5 to the power of 7 odds (= 0.0078125 or roughly 1%) but to look back after and say anything isn’t a matter of probablity, it’s now a certainty, Paul did get them all right. Look at events that have happened in terms of probability is part of human nature but is ultimately flawed, 1 in a million events happen every day, its the ability to predict them happening that is missing!
There are lots of people out there that could explain this better than me (Hopefully one of the will!!) But yeah! Sorry for boring everyone with poorly explained maths!
Posted by LisaBrunders on July 26, 2010
How about Ballroom dance with Fern Britton or sing with Lady Gaga?
I suppose if enough guesses are put forward it’ll then become probable that one of them will happen!
Posted by Kathryn on July 26, 2010
One hopefully achievable goal would be to “Have a picture taken with Mark Watson”. Definitely within the realms of probability- I’d give it a 70% chance, given that I haven’t booked any tickets yet. (Not wanting to show off but I have an A* in maths, exams getting easier and all that…)
Posted by Sam on July 26, 2010
These suggestions get more difficult as they go along, although also reflect increased amounts of optimism too.
Discussing tennis with Daniel Radcliffe
Sharing a cab with Norman Tebbit
Sharing a glance across a crowded room with Michael Caine
Investing in a new chocolate bar with Andy Peters
Spending an evening at a swing dancing event with Joseph Gordan Levitt
Wrestling Angela Lansbury for the chance to open a hospital ward.
Posted by helen (@iamanicelady) on July 26, 2010
i would like you to paint a watercolour of tim westwood. it’s about time his rugged handsome face was captured by art…
xx