“What are you doing? You’re not actually going into an asteroid field?!?”
Princess Leia looked over at Han Solo in disbelief.
Han shot back, “They’d be crazy to follow us, wouldn’t they?”
“You don’t have to do this to impress me.”
C3PO’s jarring voice jumped in at this point, rudely reminding everyone of the grim reality they were facing:
“Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to one”.
Han replies, “Always tell me the odds”.
In this galaxy that’s not so far away, our version of Han Solo knows that understanding probabilities is the key to navigating life's unpredictable asteroid fields.
We Are Oddsmakers
The Han Solo of the original Empire Strikes Back positively exudes being human.
This is his character’s defining trait: Han doesn’t trust droids, he doesn’t want to know odds or calculate probabilities, and he often makes split-second decisions that seem emotional in nature.
In other words, Han is a perfect anti-hero. His irrationality is why he’s successful.
The Star Wars universe is a work of fantasy, and that environment extends to how characters behave onscreen.
In real life, understanding the odds is what makes us human.
If we journey back through time, we find that our very ancestors often stood at such precipices, where hasty judgements had profound consequences.
Each rustle in the grass, every shadow in the twilight could signify a lurking predator. The decision to flee or stand ground carried with it the heavy weight of survival.
Our emotions and intelligence worked together in the moment, performing statistical approximations, and helping us to determine which course of action was most likely to us not being eaten (or eating something ourselves).
We never stopped calculating odds.
As tens of thousands of years passed, our aptitude for risk assessment broadened and improved. Probabilistic judgements like where to cross a river, or where to seek shelter, formed the bedrock of existence.
As we transitioned from hunter-gatherers to settled civilizations, the game of odds took on new dimensions. Agriculture meant that not everyone had to concern themselves with survival all the time, so people started establishing trade, forming infrastructure, and building things.
With these advancements came the need to predict more sophisticated outcomes.
Early forms of accounting and record-keeping developed in ancient Mesopotamia. These records allowed them to track patterns in trade, identify profitable routes, and forecast potential surpluses or shortages.
The Greeks were no strangers to thinking about odds. Ratios and proportions made it easier to describe probabilities in tangible terms, and to compare relative likelihoods of outcomes.
Renaissance and Enlightenment
With the fall of great empires, new kingdoms and feudal systems arose, and so did novel risks and uncertainties. While there were lots of mathematical and scientific discoveries during the middle ages, the Renaissance is really where thinking about probabilities was able to “level up.”
In 1494, Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, often referred to as the father of accounting, documented the method of double-entry bookkeeping. This system had been in use in Italy prior to his documentation, but his treatise provided merchants with a clearer understanding of their assets and liabilities, helping them make more informed decisions based on past records.
The Enlightenment era brought with it a revolution in scientific thinking. As people began to emphasize empirical evidence and reason, the studies of statistics and probabilities became more refined. Notably, the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli's Law of Large Numbers and the collaborative efforts of the French polymath Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat laid the foundation for modern statistical analysis.
From there, technological advancements have continually added new layers of complexity to our decision-making processes.
Copilot with C3PO
Today, in a world teeming with information and choices, the ability to assess odds is our way of steering through life's asteroid fields.
Now, more than ever, as we confront new challenges and uncertainties in a rapidly changing world, our ability to gauge odds and make informed choices remains our most trusted co-pilot on this grand journey.
While Han Solo’s “shoot from the hip” approach uses brash courage to defy the odds, this mentality only works in a fantasy setting. Instead, we can leverage the countless generations of probabilistic thinkers who have come before us, paving the way for us to apply our understanding of probabilities to ever-more sophisticated areas.
Decisions shape our futures in an instant, so knowing and understanding the odds isn't just a skill—it's a crucial compass guiding our journey through the vast cosmos of choices.
Let’s always ask for the odds.
This article was something
and I discussed previously, and I recommend checking out his excellent rant about statistics here:
I love this. It's great. There are times in life where the odds seemed quite relevant and a nugget I had to know. But then I once ignored all odds for six years of hard work to get into the law school I wanted to attend. And it was really "against all odds". But obsession and throwing caution to the wind made it happen. One just never knows.
Andrew: "Let's always ask for the odds!"
Gamblers and lottery ticket buyers: "Cool story, bro, now watch this!"