You Are Probability: Surfing the Matrix

Just think of your father's sperm as a starting off point. A usual male produces about 100 million sperm per ejaculation. Only one of these sperm will survive the arduous journey to its terminal apex. How many sperm does a male produce in, say, an 80-year life span? No precise count is possible, since it varies with each individual, but one can roughly estimate the number to be around 500 billion or perhaps more impressive sounding as a ½ trillion. If your own father had five children, this would mean that just in terms of sperm, you are a 1 in a 100 billion winner! Couple this with the rarity of your mother's egg (of the nearly half million follicles where only about 400 or so will become viable) and the very fact that you are alive reading this essay is beyond any moneyed lottery you will ever enter.