Gary is a knife thrower. He throws a knife at 1000 people each individually with a 70% success rate in hitting them.

Lance has had 1000 people throw knives at him in his life time and he has dodged 60% of them.

Gary appears before lance and throws a knife at him. What are Lance's chances of dodging the knife?

If it isn't possible, what additional information is needed to figure this out?

Can we safely assume that Gary will hit lance between 70%-40% of the time?

Are Gary's targets attempting to dodge the knife?

Of the 1000 ppl that tried to knife Lance, (1) how many other ppl did they each throw knives at, (2) what was the average success rate?

If Gary hits Lance, will Lance die or will it affect his ability to dodge future knife attacks from Gary?

If Lance dies, will Gary still get to throw knives at the corpse?

How has Gary not been arrested after stabbing 700 people and attempting to stab another 300?

Lance seems like a real penis. Why would 1000 separate people want to knife him?

The math guise here need answers. I don't do the math thing. I just ask the questions.

This goes by many names. Look up Log5 method.

Log 5 method seems pretty cool. There are definitely some flaws to it. When calculating probability of winning the game they use two different numbers and if they are the same they do it again. In this situation there can never be a "tie" outcome. Therefore it is not mimicking the situation entirely. It is a good predictor, but has to be flawed.

http://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/...Loss_Paper.pdf

Pretty cool stuff though. I didn't actually think there was a formula like this out there. I'm pretty psyched.

One thing about this that may not be realistic to real life situations is the consideration of skill. The above equation assumes only one variable. The more skill the more likely you win. In real life other things can be taken into account skewing the probability. Maybe Lance is horrible at dodging left handed throwers. We can be real picky about this, but chances are it will be more or less correct. Still an interesting thought though.

@LegallyShoved

Gary's targets did in fact try to dodge the knives.

The 1000 people that tried to kill Lance is a mystery.

Lance is pretty good at not dying since he has been hit 600 times, but it certainly is possible. Even injury could occur.

Gary can do with the corpse what he pleases. MMMMMmmmm.

Gary has a license to kill. It was decided in court when the judge announced knife throwing a necessity to his emotional needs. His doctor even recommended it to Gary and his family, further making it more legal.

Lance was actually a pretty cool guy. He just had bad variance.

You truly don't know what you are talking about. This formula has been around for decades and has been re-discovered many times in many different settings. There are several scholastic articles explaining its mathematical underpinnings (even if many of the discoverers were unaware of them). The formula is definitely not flawed.

Try to be a little more grateful next time.

This made me lol.

I'm not entirely sure how to work this out but I would imagine to get any sort of result you would need some indicator as to how Lance's 60% dodging ability fairs in comparison to the others that Gary has been throwing knives at.