Look at the lottery : for an individual there are only two possible results, either they win the big prize, or they don't. Do you think these outcomes are equally likely?

I really don't see how that's relevant.
A pair of twins who are a boy and a girl are one option. You can't just make them into two options by deciding whether to name the boy first or the girl first.

For example, if I owned a fish and chip shop I wouldn't put 'fish and chips' and 'chips and fish' on the menu as two different options.

I don't think so - this is precisely my analysis too. This is why I always hope weaker players get weeded out and don't get encouraged to take a low or negative offer to get through to make a team of four to little or no advantage.

I'd go further than you Sarah: a weak player is usually just as much of a hindrance as a help unless it's very close at the end. They not only take an equal share of any winnings but quite often reduce the pot for everyone else just to get themselves through. If they commit a third 'sin' of passing or guessing too quickly, they reduce the chance of a win too and then they're a millstone.

Sometimes, say, two older blokes with good broad-ish general knowledge including science, sport, history and geography etc. but lacking in modern tv, pop culture topics may find a young person, esp female useful to fill gaps but they'll probably be better off planning to spot fruitless questions quickly and pass onto the next question. What you really don't want is someone with poor quiz knowledge (but anxious to make an impression) passing before you can press!

On reflection, that wasn't a very god analogy. Someone earlier gave a better one : if you toss a coin twice, then there are four possibilities :

HH, TT, HT and TH.

The point is that they are all equally likely. So if you know that one is a head, then that leaves three equally likely possibilities, two of which include a T.

As for the twins, there are obviously two possibilities for the order in which they are born.

I think it's easy to confuse the problem with a slightly different one, where you're told that the younger (or older) child is a boy/girl. In that case, the sex of the other child is clearly 50/50.

I've also seen a long, involved, explanation as to why the odds are different if you know that the boy was born on a Wednesday.

Wow, Shaun tonight on Celebrity Chase. One of the most comprehensive final chases since the early series. Pretty awesome performance!

I see they have brought in the American thing of leaving the Chaser in studio for the contestants final chase.

Yes. Impressive. Maybe he gets a bit sick of reading idiots on here who say he's weak.

And he can twerk!

If you're talking about mathematic concepts where the order of sequences is important to work out certain equations, then yes it's certainly valid.
However when you turn it into real world analogies where you are looking at actual physical things in the real world it doesn't work.
Unless however as you say the analogy is based on a sequence, such as the order in which you toss two coins.

So on Friday the team achieved 5 pushbacks but still lost?

Mark, your 'Golden Rule' that if the team get 5 pushbacks then they beat the chaser appears to be a crock of shit.

On Friday the team achieved 5 pushbacks and WON.

To those confused by this the key phrase is "At least one of them is a boy", take that and hold on to it.

If instead however the phrase was "the older child is a boy" then the chances of the younger one being a boy is 50:50.

Think of it this way. Knowing nothing about the family the chances of both being boys is 1/4. However we know something about the family and that is that both children are not girls so the chances increase to 1/3 since we disallow one combo of both girls.

Okay, thanks. At the back of my mind I was wondering if I remembered that correctly or not. It appears that as you pointed that out I obviously didn't.

I'm still watching like a hawk to see if Mark's theory turns out to be true or not though.

No, I meant it was a a bad analogy because it wasn't actually related to the subject under discussion. The analogy was about the probabilities of two possible outcomes. The topic is about treating two different outcomes (TH, HT) as though they were a single outcome, equally as likely as the other two outcomes (HH,TT)

The topic is actually about The Chase, and we're both guilty of taking it further off topic the more we talk about this.

Right let's see who's chasing today

And it's Paul today

Paul today

Paul tonight, let's see how he gets on.

I forecast a win for The Sinnerman.

Who haven't we seen lose recently?

Yes Chris it's pretty obvious your geography is not great

At least he didn't say IoW !

Q. Who is the adopted father of Tracy Barlow?
A. Ken Bardow.

Can't believe she went for 35 grand after getting only a grand in R1. Talk about deluded.

I don't think she was deluded. If she'd got a half decent score in the Cashbuilder she'd have probably gone for that. She probably thought that it wasn't worth just taking £1,000 or £100 back, there'd be hardly anything in the prize fund.

I don't think it was a bad decision.

The last bloke should probably have gone high as well. He'll more than likely get knocked out, but it's hardly a disaster. After all, even if he gets back, they're probably not going to win. So he might as well have a dash and go for the big money.