“Hey, Biff!” Tommy said. “Settle a bet for us!”
Biff opened his eyes, grabbed his glasses from the bedside table, and sat up in bed. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Tommy and I have been arguing for the last hour about this,” Gary explained.
“Why are you both in my room?”
“Okay, so I had bought some lottery tickets and Gary made fun of me.”
“Because it’s ridiculous!”
“Somebody has to win!”
Biff started to drift off.
“Biff! Wake up! So, I tell Tommy that it is more likely that all of the friends from the show ‘Friends’ would die in separate car accidents next year than he wins the lottery.”
“And I said, that’s ridiculous. Because people win the lottery all the time, and so far, none of the friends from ‘Friends’ has died.”
“That’s the odds of somebody winning, not the odds of Tommy winning!”
Biff rubbed his face. “Okay, about 40,000 Americans die from traffic deaths, over a population of 300,000,000. That works out to be about 13 out of 100,000 people will die from cars. So, the chance of one of the friends from ‘Friends’ dying would be that. The chances of all of them would be that to the sixth power. 13 to the sixth is about 5,000,000 over a one with thirty zeroes, like five over ten to the twenty-fourth. Powerball odds are about 1 in 176,000,000. Lottery is more likely.”
“So, how many of the ‘Friends’ car deaths is it equal to?”