Odds
The odds in favor of an event or a proposition are the ratio of the probability that an event will happen to the probability that it will not happen. For example, the odds that a randomly chosen day of the week is a Sunday are one to six, which is sometimes written 1:6.
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Famous quotes containing the word odds:
“Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds with other nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.”
—Edna O’Brien (b. c. 1932)
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear- headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)