What Are The Odds?

April 2006

This month’s query is:

Out of our total of 18 players, all but 7 have won the trophy:

What are the odds that all seven players win the trophy in the next seven tournaments?

18 players total

7 players who have never won

For this, I will have to assume that everyone plays every tournament.  We know that at the first of the seven tournaments, if everyone shows up that we will have a 7 of 18 chance that a player who hasn’t previously won the trophy could.  If that did happen, that would now leave us with 6 players who haven’t won. So then next month, it would leave us with a 6 of 18 chance for a player who hasn’t previously won the trophy to win.

It will go that way on down to the last month where there is only one player who hasn’t won the trophy and therefore that would be a 1 in 18 shot.

How we would multiply that is to take 7 over 18 X 6 over 18 X 5 over 18 and so on down to X 1 over 18.

The result would be 121472 to 1 shot!

I promised at last month’s tournament that this month’s query would result at over a 2million to 1 shot, but thanks to the Jerminator for screwing everything up by winning the trophy for the first time, that didn't happen.

I will not be taking any action on this month’s query because I like my house! The odds are steep but not impenetrable.