高一英语限时阅读

高一英语限时阅读（18）

A

It’s Probably not All Luck

IN 2005, David J. Hand, a math professor at Imperial College London, went to a conference(会议) in the US with one of his students. They bought their return tickets separately. But when they boarded the plane, they were surprised to find that they were seated right next to each other.

“What a coincidence（巧合）!” you might say.

Yes, coincidences happen all the time. Sometimes they are so weird (不可思议的) that there seem to be no explanations for them. That sometimes leads people to attribute them to supernatural forces. But are those really responsible?

According to a new book by Professor Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day, what we think of as extremely unlikely events actually happen around us all the time, and they can all be explained by the laws of probability, reported The Washington Post.

Take Hand’s experience on the plane as an example. Since there are 450 seats on that plane, it may seem like a 1 in 450 chance that he would have been seated next to his student. But the fact is that many passengers travel in pairs or other groups, and they all require adjacent (相邻的) seats, which makes solo travelers more likely to be seated next to other solo travelers. This increases the odds（几率）from 1 in 450 to a much greater chance.

Another occasion on which coincidences happen frequently is the lottery（彩票）. On Sept 6, 2009, for example, the Bulgarian lottery randomly selected the winning numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35, and four days later those numbers were chosen again.

According to Hand, although the odds of two specific number draws (抽取) matching are very small, since there are many lotteries globally, the chance of any two draws matching increases with the number of draws, and it reaches a probability of greater than 50 percent by the 4,404th round.

“With a large enough number of opportunities, any outrageous (不寻常的) thing is likely to happen,” writes Hand.

People tend to underestimate（低估）the probability of an event because they usually focus on specific instances instead of the broader context, he added.

“We should expect the unexpected,” Hand told New Scientist. “They may not be as improbable as you think.”

1. By mentioning Hand’s experi ence on the flight at the beginning of the article, the author intends to ____.

A. show how people usually react to coincidences

B. show that such coincidences actually happen frequently

C. promote Hand’s newly-published book on coincidences

D. make us wonder what caused that coincidence

2. What does Hand think can explain almost all coincidences?

A. Supernatural forces.

B. The laws of probability.

C. Their broader contexts.

D. The law of natural selection.

3. What did Hand believe increased his chances of sitting next to his student?

A. The limited seats on the plane.

B. The times when they booked their return tickets.