Turks understand statistics better than the rest of us, or at least they seem to have a more practical statistical bias. I say that because today a bird pooped on me, and after I texted my wife the news she quickly responded by congratulating me and then telling me to buy lottery tickets.
My wife is a Turk, born and raised in a small town on the Black Sea coast, and being pooped on by a bird is, for them, a sign of good luck to come: in fact, many of the country’s lottery tickets have images of birds on them for that very reason.
How did being defecated on become a portent of good luck? It may be as simple as some canny marketer wanting to exploit a not-infrequent occurrence, but based on the myriad Turks I’ve come to know I think it’s because their culture has a slightly different perspective on statistics.
My natural reaction to having my suit coat soiled was to be angry and await the next rotten thing that’s bound to happen to me. The Turkish approach, on the other hand, takes an entirely different perspective: Since one bad thing just happened, and since these things even out, it’s probably more likely that something good is going to happen soon. Thus, the person might as well do what he can to ensure that the something is really, really good, like winning the lottery.
The idea that the outcome of myriad random events will even out, or regress towards the mean, isn’t the statistically correct perspective: It’s proper to assume that all of these events are largely independent, and that what happened to me on my way to lunch has no bearing on what might happen to me the rest of today – or at any time in the future.
But the human mind has trouble accepting that life is random and that events simply occur without any connection to one another, so it takes the data it receives and struggles to put together some sort of narrative with which it can make sense of the world.
As someone who was once a statistics professor I understand this completely, but my limited intellect can’t overcome my brain’s predilection to impose order on these disparate data points that make up my life. All I can do with my training is choose which narrative to embrace.
So as I head home to celebrate my birthday with my wife and children and their godfather I will revel in the good fortune that awaits me, for reasons that go beyond me being pooped on today.
