Started by Tomás Rinaldi (@tomas_rinaldi) ·
Paul the Octopus went 8 for 8 and it means nothing
Germany's psychic octopus picked the winner of all seven of their 2010 games plus the final. The odds of that by pure chance are 1 in 256, which sounds impressive until you count how many animal oracles there were.
5 sources · 17 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “paul the octopus world cup predictions”
- Ended at
- Survivorship bias
The Trail
- “paul the octopus world cup predictions” (google.com)
- Paul the Octopus (en.wikipedia.org)
he 'picked' by eating from one of two boxes with flags on them
- 2010 FIFA World Cup (en.wikipedia.org)
- Multiple comparisons problem (en.wikipedia.org)
lots of zoos had psychic animals that summer. we only remember the one that kept winning
- Survivorship bias (en.wikipedia.org)
Keep going
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