The Statistical Gods

God does not play dice. EINSTEIN.

Would it rain today? Would a volcano erupt? Would you meet a traffic accident today? Would you meet the girl of your choice? Happenings all around us take place so randomly that we have taken it for granted that we would not know what is to come the next instancea classical example of a stereotypical belief, a locked-in paradigm of a sort. Fact is that events around us are so randomized that they appear managed according to precise mechanisms and principles Principle of Randomness and Chaos. Some of these principles have been clearly understood, many more remain to be elucidated and appreciated. This is because man can only explain or express what he can experience, beyond which it is merely conjectural and subject to change. Unfortunately, man will never know it all because he will never know if he has reached the limits of his observations.

The grand plan of Nature is divided into two parts; one part yields the blueprint of things to be, how they should interact with each other and within themselves. The other part determines the happening of events. The happenstance theory. The discussion of material theories should be preceded by the discussion of the plan that derives them and drives them.

Orderly as it all seems, the rising of sun, the movement of stars, the undulation of waves, the changes in weathers, etc., are actually part of a greater system that is randomized, haphazard and chaotic.

The structure or events we observe are only a small portion of the highly randomized structure of the universe. Unable to piece our observations with the grand plan, we find it unique and perplexing. All the bits and pieces of this grand plan are based on the theory of statistical events.

There is no science more fundamental or powerful than the science of statistics, a divine plan which controls why and when some events take place. From the time of birth to death, we find ourselves at the mercy of our "fate," "God's will," or such. The beauty of the plan of Almighty is that it is truly randomized; God does not create each event. He has created the system which produces events. What is the chance of you dying while reading this book? God willing, about 1 in 10 million; your chances of dying in road accident are about 1 in 1,000 meaning that for each 1,000 trips you take, one will be not fateful. But does it mean you will have an accident. Not necessarily because someone else may have two accidents before they reach the 1,000 trip mark. This is what we call God's will-we can gain a great deal of insight into the Divine plan from the knowledge of statistics. Einstein said that nature does not play dice and that the great order in the nature is not random. But now we know that randomness itself is a great order when viewed from a greater order. What Einstein referred to was probably the creation of the theory of statistical odds because from there on the event take charge of themselves

Statistics allows us to explore the totally unknown and unchartered territories. How many specks of sand in the entire ocean are of darker color? How many fish there are in the seas? Should sun rise tomorrow from the east again? How long do you think you should live? Is your next child going to be a boy or a girl? These are some of the questions statistics answers. It also explains our behavior and attitudes and just about lays out all details of our daily life. Yet so few of us are appreciative of the power of statistical theories.

Statistics is the art of prediction akin to having a crystal ball; however, unlike the mystical crystal ball, it is based on certain natural lawslaws which need not be proven. Let us start with a dime. If you flip a it, how often would you get either heads or tails. Equally. Why? Because when in the air, the coin has an equal chance of hitting heads or tails. Could you have gotten two tails in a row? Certainly, because the coin does not have memory. After your first flip, only you know whether it was a head or tail, the coin does not know and cannot acquire a behavior which would prefer the side which has not fallen yet. But because the number of times you are flipping far exceeds the possibilities of falling, all possibilities, i.e., heads or tails should appear. However, testing this theory requires that the dime be flipped for large enough times. Try flipping it for four or five times, the theory may not work. With each flip, you come closer to the distribution described above. Let us extend this analogy to a lottery game. There are, say, 46 balls in a bowl. The computer picks up one ball and it reads 0. The ball goes back to the bowl and computer picks up another ball. What is the chance that it will again be 0. Just the same as it was the first time around. The third time around and the fourth time around. All because the ball does not have a memory and it has an equal chance of appearing as any other number. Therefore, theoretically, a pick chosen: 0,0,0,0,0 should have same chance of winning as a number 1,1,1,1,1. But you do not see people selecting these numbers. A good argument would be that these numbers have never won before; the answer will be so haven't any other numbers you may have chosen or else you will be a millionaire basking in the sun somewhere in the south of France. (Note: If you already are without winning the lottery, you are an statistical oddity-cherish it.) The chances of picking five numbers out of a tumble of 46 numbers are about as high as getting hit by lightning on clear days. But people do win lottery games but then people do get hit by lightning also on a clear day. What causes events to take with certain eventuality is the frequency of their occurrence. How often an event is repeated determines its average outcome. If we learn to appreciate statistical principles, lotteries would collapse.

The numbers theory has much to do with our fate and our existence. Pythagoras into details of how numbers are associated with man's destiny. The current theory of numbers tells us about what we cannot experience directly like the question of our fate. Human beings feel their fate is destined by the Almighty. Long debates in the old and new philosophy all conclude that whereas man may think he is a master of his destiny, he is in reality not.

Events when happening randomly fall under the domain of a normal distribution curve. We have little choice in determining where we get counted. Our innate intelligence, or whether we will get hit by a Mack truck are all described by our position under the dome of the normal distribution curve of events. However, knowing the chances of an event happening, we can plan to avoid falling on the wrong side of the distribution curve. The use of basic horse-sense works well here. The Aristotelian doctrine of mean summarizes it well (see below). Most would not normally jump out of plane without a parachute but many do take much greater risks in life and do get hurt and then wonder why? Apparently an obvious adverse outcome or risk does not keep men from trying. Daredevils tell it all. An old Persian saying, "Ignorance is trying the tried," applies well to mankind.Only man can be blamed, not God, for man's repetitive ignorance.

Strongly attached to the concept of statistical roulette is the question of Fate. Emerson, in The Conduct of Life states, Whatever limits us, we call Fate.

Is man free to mold his own destiny, or is he a mere straw in the wind of fate? Do our ideals, hopes, acts and wills mean anything in the universe? Is it true, as some hold, that we come from the unknown, are buffeted around by forces of which we have no control, and at last return to the unknown?

The primitive man believed in "animism," the belief that every object in the universe is a person like him but far more powerful because it had spirit and could cause much harm. The modern man with a more complicated view comes to the same conclusion-more or less. Is man a mere pawn on the chessboard of universal forces over which he can have no control or is he able to determine his fate, his destiny, to some degree at least? Great majority of philosophers find that there is some freedom for man, others turn him over to inscrutable fate.

The popular view is that though subject to the factors of the universe in which man lives, he is able to inquire, think, plan, reach decisions and act upon them with the result that the universe is changed by his action. Human mind, per se, cannot long be content to place itself wholly in the hands of fate. It inevitably rises up to proclaim its freedom and challenges whatever forces there be to beat it down.

Inevitably death must overtake man. The pessimists stand up to assert that death has proven their point, and that man, no matter how he may protest, is at last forced to bow to a fate which he can no longer challenge. But the optimists will answer back that death is no defeat, but is actually a victory for the will of man.

Though beaten down time and again by forces in the universe, man rises up again and again to proclaim, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

What rationalizes this middle of the road acceptance of man's fate and will is the science of statistics. In the cycle of events, say glacial ages and Armageddon, our lifetimes represent a minuscule fraction of the Day of Reality. How many men reach their destiny and how many don't is like a herd of ants trying to scale a hill, some make it and some don't. Is the fate of each ant is written well ahead in some book? Obviously not. Such is also the case of man. If all men try same thing over and over again, some will and others will not make it. Therefore by statistical process of selection the fate is sealed. But this does not mean we don't have any freedom of action or movement. We know enough examples of single minds creating legends will.

God's will in man's action is always present for God expresses itself through the action of a man. So, it is not possible to isolate our actions with that of God; the mechanism being that the statistical odds come to us through instructions from God. Whether man has free will or not is debatable. There is no clear dividing line between a protozoan and man; if man has free will then the protozoan must also, a concept we are not willing to accept. This is despite the current findings that the two most unique human abilities, language and handedness or use of right or left hand for specific tasks are now discovered in many lower species also.

Driven by a giant chemical machine, animals and forests keep going without a free will; the development of brain in man must not make that much of a difference, unless of course through Divine plan man was declared superior and afforded the free will. On the contrary, creatures whom we regard as definitely not having free will may have their own system of values to consider what is free will. Is it up to a tree to grow a leaf in any particular direction, or perhaps it takes a statistical change; the movement of sunflower towards sun could well be a free will of the flower. These stimuli and their resultant effects can not be described using the vocabulary we understand. The ultimate result is that we feel we have some free will, not to determine our destiny but to mold our actions according to our desires. The desires themselves may have been generated through a Divine plan leaving us actually no free will at all but a feeling of it. Nothing makes a man a greater believer than his helplessness-God must exist.