"Chance and probability are part of the game, " Montella says.

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By random chance, there is a 25% probability that a given fund will be in the top quartile so you might expect that at least 25% of these top performers stayed in the top quartile.

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Thus, by deliberately disrupting all redundant safety systems, saboteurs can cause a severe event that would have had only a very low probability of occurrence if left to chance.

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In fact, when the pool is that big, the best chance of winning is to throw the rules of probability out the window and just hope your crazy picks pan out.

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He was a fine mathematician (there is a Perutz theorem in probability theory) and the plots of his Prague tales toy with chance and coincidence.

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There is a 65 percent probability of an above-normal season and an overall 90 percent chance the season will be normal or above, the agency said.

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Yet, taking these (extremely common) measures raises the probability that what the researcher finds in his data is due to sheer chance from the conventional 5% to a whopping 60.7%, without the researcher realising it.

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Morgan Stanley Smith Barney predicts a 35% chance one country will break away from the EU at some point, compared to a 40% probability it will remain in tact, said Ron Hart, managing director of wealth management.

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