According to Wikipedia, the odds of being struck by lightning over the course of a lifetime are about 1 in 3,000.
Assuming that lightning strikes are independent events, the chances of getting struck by lightning 7 times in one lifetime are about 1 in about 2.2 trillion trillion (that second trillion is not a typo, the number is really that big). Despite incomprehensibly long odds, this is exactly what happened to a man named Roy Sullivan between the years of 1942 and 1977.
Granted, Sullivan was a Park Ranger in Virginia and spent quite a bit of time outdoors, but my point is that the world is a very big place and highly improbable events happen all the time. The law of large numbers says that with a big enough sample, many highly improbable events are bound to occur, like when a woman won the New Jersey lottery twice in a span of four months (odds are about one in 17 trillion). Or like when a college student coded a web site that now has over 500 million users and is worth upwards of 20 billion dollars. The name of this (former) college student is Mark Zuckerberg and the company is, of course, Facebook.
To read the full, original article click on this link: 4 Problems With Facebook's Business Model That Would Kill Any Other Startup
Author: Jesse Lipson
