What Are the Chances of Beating the Odds? – Brian’s Blog

A simple everyday occurrence had me thinking about the odds of certain events happening. I'll tell you what that is in a just a moment.

It's funny what spurs your thoughts. For me, it was a family shopping trip on Sunday. Something happened that probably doesn't happen very often, so I did some research on the probabilities of rare events.

• Odds of winning a big Powerball jackpot: One in 175 million. (Powerball)
• Getting hit by lightning: One in 134,906. (National Safety Council)
• Odds of becoming a major movie star: One in 1,505,000. (Book of Odds)
• Odds of getting attacked by a shark: One in 11.5 million. (U.S. Lifesaving Association)

Something happened to me on Sunday that defies all of these rare happenings. I figure the odds of it happening are even greater than the things I described above. Guess what it was?

Walking into and being able to use an unoccupied public restroom right after it had been cleaned.

I'm serious. Just think about it. How often does this happen to you? A public restroom in a busy store that is clean, pristine, fresh-smelling and unoccupied. It simply doesn't happen very often. This one was so clean, I wanted to move in.  Mathematically, I wonder what the odds of that happening really are.

Now that this has happened to me, I'm seriously buying a Powerball ticket this week. I figure the odds of winning just got better!