What is "improbability"

Usage examples of "improbability".

We were all in awe of Kalinin by reputation, and the sheer improbability of a call from the Great Man to a young scientist made me wonder what I could have done wrong.

He was preoccupied, driving the dying submersible toward the still-out-of-sight coastline at a weakening eight knots, trying to keep the ship-functions on line, watching the skies for enemy chariots through the periscope buoy, and generally brooding about the improbability of their continued survival.

Probability is a standard formed by experience, and it is not surprising that the anchorets of libraries should object to the improbability of The Corsair, and yet acknowledge the poetical power displayed in the composition.

They are in their fashion fearless, irreligiously considering themselves the coequals of destiny and having only contempt for the Demigoddess of Chance, the Imp of Luck, and the Demon of Improbability.

He said, the evidence was not adequate to the improbability of the thing.

Beyond that, he had an ascending series of goals with an ascending level of improbability.

But the answer was yes, and so I found myself in the midst of the second improbability, Las Vegas on Ash Wednesday.

Over the years, as the prospect of a New Chenega receded into improbability, Nikolas became, in turn, an Orthodox priest, a notorious alcoholic and failed suicide.

Both the number of pages and the correlation coefficient, a measure of the improbability that the correlation was by chance, increased as he watched.

Jacqueline gasped, and Thomas saw his comfortable theory go glimmering away down a dark corridor of improbability.

Beugnot urges, with much force, the improbability that the Christian emperor would submit such a question to the senate, whose authority was nearly obsolete, except on one occasion, which was almost hailed as an epoch in the restoration of her ancient privileges.

On the spectrum of improbabilities, the spotlight turns out to illuminate only the narrow range from the left-hand end (certainty) up to minor miracles, like a hole-in-one or a dream that comes true.

There is a vast range of mathematically calculable improbabilities way outside the range of the spotlight.

We are equipped to make mental calculations of risk and odds, within the range of improbabilities that would be useful in human life.

But they cannot be the whole truth, for they deny the very heart of the evolution theory, which gives it the power to dissolve astronomical improbabilities and explain prodigies of apparent miracle.