Reply #5: The thing with statistics is [View All]

[billyskank]

you have to forget about logic. If you try to work something out by logic, you'll probably get the wrong answer. For example:

The probability of getting a head when flipping a coin is 0.5. If you flip the coin twice, that doubles the probability, right? Wrong, of course, because if you flip a coin twice you are still not guaranteed to get a head.

The only way to approach probability is to calculate how many possible outcomes there are, how many of those outcomes satisfy what you want, and divide the one by the other. No matter how fancy the maths may be (and probability involves some reasonably fancy looking maths), that's what it boils down to in the end.