Saturday, 25th September
When an event or series of events happen in my life by chance which to my utmost surprise is gravely unexpected and inherently fortunate, the first question that comes to mind would be, "what are the odds?" Like getting served by my high school lover in a restaurant while on a night out with my girlfriends in a totally different city and funnily enough, the only reason why we were at the restaurant was because our usual restaurant didn't open that particular day (why, I don't know), now, what are the odds of that actually happening? Would I call it "Serendipity?"
That brings me to the question I have for you today, "What Are The Odds?"
Before we tackle that, I would like to shed more light on what serendipity is...
Serendipity, according to the English Dictionary is a combination of events which have come together by chance to make a surprisingly good or wonderful outcome. Further more, it can be taken to mean an unsought, unintended, and/or unexpected, but fortunate, discovery and/or learning experience that happens by accident. Some might call it a happy accident.
Now, bringing this ideology to playing the odds, what would you say the odds are exactly?
According to Wikipedia, Odds provide a measure of the likelihood of a particular outcome. Mathematically, they are calculated as the rate of the number of events that produce that outcome to the number that do not. Odds are commonly used in gambling and statistics. Odds can be determined by examining rolling a six-sided die, kind of like probability.
Another way of looking at odds is idiomatically which I'm sure most people myself included, are used to looking at odds.
Idiomatically, what are the odds? Still according to Wikipedia;
How likely do you think it is that something will happen or something is the case? For example, one can say that new intern is a nightmare, what are the odds he screws up another order?
How likely do you think that is or was incredible; that is or was extremely unlikely? For example, And then it turned out that both our moms sat next to each other in a class in college; what are the odds?
This time around, we are going to look at it for an entirely different angle but before that, did you know about actually playing the odds; a game actually. I think it's called what are the odds game (how original)
What are the odds, or Odds are; is a simple game where you dare another player to do a ridiculous task (kind of like Truth or Dare but not quite). One player asks another how likely they are to complete a dare, and then the second player picks a number between 2 and 100 as a limit for an number range.
It's played like this...
One person starts. Let's call them V. V selects the person she wants to challenge (T) and asks, "What are the odds..." T can now refuse the dare but will be banned from daring other people. If T accepts, he will respond with the odds. The odds will be told as in 1 in X where X is a number between 2 to 100. So, for example, T says "1 in 10". V and T simultaneously countdown from three to zero but instead of zero, they say a number between 1 and the selected range, here 10. If both say the same number, it's over and it's the turn of the selected person T that can pick someone for a different dare.
That's it!
Here's a practical example...
V: What are the odds of you going down to your knees and making a marriage proposal to the next person walking by?
T: 1 in 10
V and T: 3, 2, 1...
V: 5; T: 9
Since they both said different numbers, it's over and nothing happens.
Alternative,
V: 6; T: 6
Since they both said the same number,
T now needs to propose to the next person he meets.
A/N: Well, when I try to think back to some of the events that has occurred in my life, I realise that a significant amount of experiences can be summed up to serendipity. Kind of like happy accidents now that I think about it.
