Pacific Northwest bakes under once-in-a-millennium heat dome – CBS News
Pacific Northwest bakes under once-in-a-millennium heat dome – CBS News
The heat wave baking the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, Canada, is of an intensity never recorded by modern humans. By one measure it is more rare than a once in a 1,000 year event — which means that if you could live in this particular spot for 1,000 years, you'd likely only experience a heat dome like this once, if ever.
This article shows that the reporters at CBS News don't understand how probability works.
A millennium heat wave, has only a 63.2% chance of happening in 1,000 years. It also has a 1 in 1,000 chance of happening any specific year, or 0.1% probability in any specific year. That doesn't mean it's impossible to happen any one year, or that two years consecutively of millennium heat waves doesn't mean the probability is wrong.
People often think when you flip a coin that each time you should get a head then a tail then a head, but if that rarely that happens. 50% probability only happens after many coin flips, possibly hundreds. The best way to show somebody isn't faking a coin toss is to look for long runs of heads or tails, because that's most common to happen with probability.
