As we have seen in a previous blog, Oscar knows the notion of probability is absurd. He says that if you add in ‘what might have been’, then even the whole notion of numbers gets really screwed up.

I commute by train, and the railway station is four bus stops from my home. Returning from London one day last week, I just missed a bus. So instinctively I ran after it. It came to a halt at the next stop further down the street. Just before I reached that stop, the bus took off again. Exactly the same thing happened at the next stop, and the next. Only one stop away from home, exhausted I gave up and decided to walk.

Once home I kissed the cat, and told my wife how I had run home. I was very pleased with myself. I announced that in running home I had saved £1.20.

Oscar was listening. As cynical as ever he butted in: “Call yourself a professor! If you had chased a taxi you would have saved £5.”

Students on the LSE course Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems (ADMIS) are very familiar with my cat Oscar. Oscar is very special; he can talk.

When some friends visited my home recently, I mentioned my cat’s talent. Totally disbelieving, they gave me odds of ten-to-one that Oscar couldn’t talk. I called him over; but he just sat there, … miaow … he didn’t say a word. My friends took my money and left.

I was furious, and glared at him; “no prawns for you tonight”. Then in a very superior voice, because Oscar is a very superior cat, he purred: “call yourself a professor! Tomorrow night we’ll get a hundred-to-one.”

Oscar is saying that independent variables so beloved of statisticians simply do not exist whenever people are involved. As far as my friends were concerned there was just one bet, but for Oscar he deliberately threw today’s bet to win at far better odds tomorrow. So here we realize that by bringing time into the equation, and the fact that one party has inside information, the notion of a numerical probability bears absolutely no relation to what is actually happening.