The Improbable Book
Or, how Anthony Hopkins defied the odds
Just a brief note for a Saturday afternoon. On October 1, I posted an essay called “Impossible Things before Breakfast: Why Rarities Are a Dime a Dozen.” In it, I noted that I had just downloaded a book on the same topic: The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day, by statistician David J. Hand. I haven’t read enough yet to review the book, but I’ll share the great story that Hand uses to open the book:
In the summer of 1972, the actor Anthony Hopkins was signed to play a leading role in a film based on George Feifer’s novel The Girl from Petrovka, so he traveled to London to buy a copy of the book. Unfortunately, none of the main London bookstores had a copy. Then, on his way home, waiting for an underground train at Leicester Square tube station, he saw a discarded book lying on the seat next to him. It was a copy of The Girl from Petrovka.
As if that was not coincidence enough, more was to follow. Later, when he had a chance to meet the author, Hopkins told him about this strange occurrence. Feifer was interested. He said that in November 1971 he had lent a friend a copy of the book—a uniquely annotated copy in which he had made notes on turning the British English into American English (“labour” to “labor,” and so on) for the publication of an American version—but his friend had lost the copy in Bayswater, London. A quick check of the annotations in the copy Hopkins had found showed that it was the very same copy that Feifer’s friend had mislaid.
You have to ask: What’s the chance of that happening? One in a million? One in a billion? Either way, it begins to stretch the bounds of credibility. It hints at an explanation in terms of forces and influences of which we are unaware, bringing the book back in a circle to Hopkins and then to Feifer.
As one who has taught statistics, I understand why wildly improbable occurrences are so common—but that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable. As Professor Hand wrote in his book, “[A] grasp of the cause of the colors of the rainbow doesn’t detract from its wonder.”
Robert F. Graboyes is president of RFG Counterpoint, LLC in Alexandria, Virginia. An economist, journalist, and musician, he holds five degrees, including a PhD in economics from Columbia University. An award-winning professor, in 2014, he received the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism.
