Remember these words: Cat. Apple. Table.

Forget about statistics.

To me, statistics feels like a branch of mathematics that is a product of our needs, as a society, to make sense of an otherwise imbecilic world. Statistics is defined as "the branch of mathematics that deals with the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of numerical data. Statistics is especially useful in drawing general conclusions about a set of data from a sample of the data" (The American Heritage Science Dictionary). In other places it is described a branch of mathematics that uses probability theory.

Statistics draws general conclusions about a set of data from a sample of the data using probability theory. But we let statistics govern our lives. What we choose to do and not to do. Another way that we use statistics is as a reader of the future. That is, we use statistics to determine whether or not something will likely happen at some point in the future. This to me seems inconsistent. How can we use samples of data in the past or present in order to determine something that has not yet happened? People take such a big issue with the idea of fate, destiny, and the Judeo-Christian ideology that supports Providence, and yet they adhere to an idea that purports to be able to use the past to make an educated assumption about the future.

To me, statistics is only relevant in a world of potentiality - a world of possibilities and probabilities. That is the world that waits for us in the future. Us looking forward into the face of the future is like looking into a dark cave. The possibilities of the shape of the cave is infinite. It is not until we walk into the cave and light is shined into the cave that we can determine exactly how the cave is shaped. Similarly, the future is a shapeless terrain with infinite shapes that it can take determined by the decisions we make today; and it is not until we enter the future, and it becomes present, where the light shines onto that time that we can determine exactly the way things have turned out. But we do not live in a world of probabilities; rather, we live in a world of actualities. Flipping a coin, you have a 50% chance that it lands heads and a 50% chance that it lands tails. But I can flip it 100 times and get heads 75 times and tails only 25. So much for statistics.

A single die (one half of a pair of dice) has six sides, each numbered 1-6. If you plan on rolling the die at some point in the future and you hope that the number "5" turns up, statistics and probability says that there is a 1 in 6 chance that "5" will show up (16.67%). Great! I'm excited. So I roll the die and I get a "3". When there is no die and there is no rolling and we are only talking about what could happen if I rolled a die and wanted to see a "5" that is when we are in the world of probabilities where my 16.67% chance has some substance. but when I have the die and am prepared to roll it and have selected the number I wish to be displayed, 1 in 6 is gone, and I'm left with a very simple dichotomous future: either the die will turn up "5" or it will not turn up "5." My chances are 50/50.

Either something does happen or else it does not happen. There is no reason to consider the probability of something happening in reality as such, because that consideration is only significant if we remain in a vacuum. There is a fifty percent chance of anything happening to you, around you, inside of you, beside you, etc. The probability of being killed in an automobile accident are 5,000 to 1 (http://www.fearlessflight.com/), the possibility of fatally slipping in a bath or shower is 2,232 to 1, and your odds of getting hemorrhoids are 25 to 1 (www.funny2.com/odds). These statistics are data-based approximations. And yet, it serves me no purpose to concentrate on these bits of information, because approximations can only be applied to a large group or else, when applied to significantly smaller set (as in an individual or all the people known by an individual), the sample set is too small. When the information is in fact attributed to a large group, the best the statistics can do is make some generalized impersonal statement about the group at large without expressing anything specific regarding the individuals that make up the group.

Statistics in no way can be used as an indicator of the likelihood of my personal chances of experiencing any of the conclusions drawn by said statistics. Once I experience one or another of the infinite experiences that one may or may not have, it becomes irrelevant what the prior probability of such an event to have occurred was, because it has ACTUALLY occurred. Whether the possibility before the event took place was 5 to 1 or 5,000,000 to 1, the event has actually happened and I am experiencing it. Whatever the relative statistics may have been for me to have developed the specific type of cancer that I have, my chances to ACTUALLY have developed that cancer was and always would have been 50/50. Either I was going to develop the cancer or I was not going to develop the cancer.

Paradoxically, the only way to know whether or not something will happen is for it to happen, at which point it becomes inconsequential what the likelihood of the thing happening was previously. On the other hand, the only way to know that something will NOT happen will be through retrospective observation by those who care about us after we die. That is, the possibility that you will develop cancer in your life will be present for the duration of your life, and it will only cease to be a possibility once you have moved on to the hereafter. Statistics comfort us by making us believe that we are statistically exempt from having certain things happen to us. Well, we're not...

And just in case you are thinking about locking yourself in a bubble and never leaving your house because you believe this will tilt the odds in your favor just remember what Julius Caesar said to his wife when she warned him that he should not leave his house because there was a chance that the citizens of Rome would try and kill him:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II, 33-38).

Can you remember the three words I told you to remember without looking at the title?

If not, then your brain cancer surgery did not go well...