MF

Author

Max Frisch

/max-frisch-quotes-and-sayings

16 Quotes
4 Works

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About Max Frisch on QuoteMust

Max Frisch currently has 16 indexed quotes and 4 linked works on QuoteMust. This page is the canonical destination for that author archive.

Works

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Homo Faber I'm Not Stiller Man in the Holocene Montauk

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Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the die will come up proximately 1 ,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come approximately up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable.But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term "probability" includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification. Cf. Ernst Mally's Probability and Law, Hans Reichenbach The theory Probability, Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, von Mises' Probability, Statistics and Truth

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I don__ deny that it was more than a coincidence which made things turn out as they did, it was a whole train of coincidences. But what has providence to do with it? I don__ need any mystical explanation for the occurrence of the improbable; mathematics explains it adequately, as far as I__ concerned.Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the one will come up approximately 1,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term probability includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification.