Reliability

Samantha was such a wag, always making people in the office laugh.

Her jokes were always corny, but her colleagues still laughed. She had the knack of making the day go faster with her crazy humour.

The day ended, and as usual Samantha was the first to leave. She liked to get a run in before she got dinner. As she went through the door she said “Well guys, if I don’t get mauled to death by a leopard while jogging around the park, I should see you guys tomorrow.” They all laughed and called out good night.

The next morning, the news about the trouble at the zoo and the death of a young woman in the park had spread like wildfire. The whole town was abuzz with the story of how a leopard had got out of its cage. It took several hours to track it down, capture and return it to the local zoo. It was even longer before Samantha’s body was discovered in a clump of bushes at the edge of the park.

“That makes no sense. I mean, how could this happen?” Said one of the office workers. “I mean, for heaven’s sake, it just doesn’t make sense,” she repeated, blowing her nose. “What are the odds?”

“Well…”

She turned to the man at the end of the room, who had been following the conversation, the company’s Statistical Analyst.

“Well what?”

He pointed at his screen “The odds do add up you know.”

“They do?”

“Oh! Yes. Knowing what we know about the circumstances…” He tapped a key dramatically and looked up.” To be as precise as one can be, the odds are 385.7 million to one!”

He sat back smiling at the screen.

“Thank goodness the math remains reliable.” He said “You can always rely on finding sanity in numbers.”

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