The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1878-08-08
WHAT THERE is in LUCK.
Betting and Card-Playing The Subject
Analysed by Man of Science.

Analysed by a Man of Science.
Richard A. Proctor in the London Echo.l
In Forster's Life of Dickens !" GU
rious story is told of what Dickens called
ga wonderful, a paralyzlng comet
dence," experienced on the Doncaste1
race-course. On the st. Leger day, in
1857. Dickens bought card of the
races: facetiously wrote down three names
for the winners of the three chief races
(never in his life having heard or
thought of any of the horses, except
that the winner of the Derby, who
proved to be nowhere, had been men,
toned to him), and, = if you can believe
it," he wrote to Forster, If you can
believe it without your hair standing on
end, those three races were won, one
after another, by those three horses y
CThe notes of exclamation are his own. J
Such cases as these seem to many to af-
ford absolutely convincing evidence of
the reality of what is commonly called
luck-that is the occurrence of events
such as pure chance cannot account for.
I suppose SO men in 100 believe in luck
of this sort Some men are lucky, 9TH
ers unlucky; or else on some occasions a
man is lucky, or his luck is in the as
cendant, while on others he is unlucky.
Men who ought to know most about
such matters-that is, men who very
often try their luck-have the fullest
faith in these ideas. In Steinmetz's
treatise of "The Gaming Table" we
have the axioms of a professional gam
bier (and black leg, but that is detaiD,
and among them we find the doctrine of
good and bad luck, of lucky and I'M
lucky seasons, set down as sort of first
principle, which none can doubt or
question. "a prudent player, he
says, "before undertaking anything,
should put himself to the test to d1scov-
er if he is in vein, or in luck; in all
doubt he should abstain There are
several persons" he says again, "who
are constantly pursued by bad luck; to
such [ say, Never play.
I suppose it is utterly hopeless to at
tempt to persuade those who believe i'll
luck that the experience of gamblers in
this respect has been wholly deceptive,
and that condolences such as the one,
for example, which Dickens called won
derful and paralyzing, are not in the least
wonderful, and might safely be predict
ed. One such story does more to en-
courage belief in luck than any amount
of reasoning could do to show that the
belief is untounded and mischievous.
It may be useful, however, to consider
such stories as that related above (using
it as an illustrative case). It appears,
and in one sense it was, q very singular
coincidence, that Dickens, taking one
name at random from the sets of horses
names for each of three races, should in
each case select the winner of the race
I do not know how many names there
were; but the St. Ledger is not a race
for which many horses usually run.
Probably about 10 may have run in
1857, and perhaps 6 horses for each of
the other two races. Ii this we're ST.,
the chance of doing what Dickens did
was equal to that of drawing one partic-
ular ticket from among $50 90 times 6
times g. in single trial. II there were
10 horses in each race, the chance was
the same as that of drawing l ticket
from among 1000 90 times 10 times 10),
etc, the calculation being exceedingly
simple, whatever the number of horses
may have been. Now, certainly, it was
a curious chance that any one at a first
trial should have had this piece of good
fortune-or what at least would have
been good fortune had money depended
on the result-just as it would have
seemed a curious chance if a vase con-
tanning some 400 tickets had been set
before Dickens, and he had at a first
trial drawn one particular prize
ticket. But it must be remembered
that if nothing remarkable had fol-
lowed from Dickens little experiment
we should have heard nothing about it.
We never do hear anything about the
thousands, nay, the millions, OF cases
in which men try their luck and nothing
noteworthy comes of the trial. Dickens
was one of thousands who have tried
some such experiment at their first race.
The experiment again, was, doubtless,
one of thousands in which Dickens was.
so to speak, in the way of meeting with
some strange experience. We hear
nothing of the case in which such ex-
periments fail out every single case in
Wh1Oh UhCJ ouGCCCeAs S1GLlCI Wildly Or
partially, is reported, and, once reported,
it is repeated over and over again until
each &c strange chance has done duty
for thousand strange chances. But SO
soon as we recognize this we perceive
the real Interpretation of condolences
OF the kind. They are no more wonder
full in reality than would be the drawing
of one marked ticket out of any num-
Der of tickets in much greater number
of trials (the drawn ticket being always
replaced after each triaD. If there are
thousand tickets, one of which is
marked, and million drawings are
made in this way. it is, to all intents and
purposes, certain that the marked ticket
will be drawn great number of times;
and it is exceedingly probable (the
probability amounting almost to GER
tainty) that the number Of successful
successful drawings will not greatly ex-
ceed or fall short of 1000. 1t is very
easy to show that, with sufficient num-