/ dave / wrote:
>
>
>
> I just heard on Diane Rhem's show on NPR tonight that the authorities
> are looking into a suspicious transaction on the Japanese stock exchange
> on Tuesday which involved an extremely large number of industry-specific
> shares that were sold short on Tuesday morning and then cashed out
> subsequent to the precipitous drop of the stocks after the WTC disaster.
>
Just because an event is hugely improbable does not mean that it isn't probable. Possibly someone else can phrase this more elegantly. If the probability of Event X is (say) 1 out of 15 billion, and you have a universe of events numbered 100 trillion, then Event X is not only probable but virtually certain. It would be nearly impossible for no strange events to have occurred on Tuesday morning. Several hundred thousand wildly improbable events _certainly_ are occuring right now! And if something dramatic happens this afternoon, several thousand of those events will be trumpeted as having a connection with that dramatic event.
Carrol