Chance
&
Uncertainty

Now of course you don't always need need to count or measure things exactly for a number to be useful.

A group of people can be 'about' so many.

But there are other things that you would really like to know exactly but you never can

because they haven't happened yet.

And some things are more certain than others.

You can be pretty sure that the sun will rise and set to give us day and night, as it seems to do that every day,

but even in Scotland where it rains so often, you can't always be sure when it's going to happen.

And that can be very important for someone who is wanting to harvest the grain from their fields when it is dry.

If you make a guess, what are the chances of getting it right?

When choosing to do certain things, people always want to know

how bad are the risks and what are the chances of success.

If you know you are going to have to guess at an answer, is there a way to find out the best guess?

Well, if you have data from other times a question has been asked,

and there were actual answers,

you can say what the chances are this time by looking at what happened before.

You can use numbers to work out the chances.

What are the chances of getting it right?

How bad are the risks and what are the chances of success?

Just how close can you get if you guess?

People are always trying to work out just what the chance is of something happening,

and sometimes it's really important to know,

and sometimes it doesn't really matter much.

Sometimes it's just a game where the chance is always the same,

like a game with a dice, where the chance is always one in six.

Or it can be a game of skill, where different moves are possible,

all of which have different chances of success,

and the more you know the better a player you can be.

And you really need to know the numbers,

because chance can be deceiving,

and what seems obvious isn't.

As so often happens, our senses and our minds can easily fool us.

But with numbers we can be certain,

or if we can't be certain at least we can work out what are the chances.