Betting on horses and the resurrection of Jesus (I)

Versione in italiano

A friend of yours, a real fanatic of horse races, has convinced you to follow him at the racecourse on a racing day. While you are waiting for the beginning of the races, you decide that, after all, a small betting would be fine. So you read the program of the first race, and the name of a horse comes to your attention: Soldatino!

You ask your friend if Soldatino is a good horse, but the answer is negative: in 105 races in which it participated, it "showed" (i.e., it arrived within the first three places) in just 7, that is, for each time it showed it did not for 14 times! Well, not exactly the favourite of the race...

Seeing your disappointment, your friend tries to get you a bit on the moral: "During the night it rained a lot, so the ground is very heavy." Noting your quizzical expression, your friend tells you that in 70% of the races in which Soldatino showed, the ground was heavy, and in those races in which it came in fourth or worse, the ground was heavy in 10% of cases.


At this point, confusion is painted on your face: you need to know what is the probability that Soldatino shows in the races on heavy ground, but what you know is how often it shows in all races (7 out of 105), how likely the ground is heavy when it shows (70%) and when it does not (10%). How to get the information that you need from this?

You know that Soldatino showed 7 times and out of these 70% were on heavy ground  and that it did not show for 98 times (105-7), and that out of these 10% were on heavy ground. In order to know how likely Soldatino shows on heavy ground you need calculate the ratio between these two entities, i.e. multiply the ratio "showed": "not showed" (7:98, or odds of showing) by the ratio between 70% and 10%, i.e. 0.70 / 0.10, which is 7. And 7:98 multiplied by 7 gives 49:98, i.e. 1:2, that is on heavy ground Soldatino wins a race every three, not bad!

Delighted by this discovery, you rush to put a bet for Soldatino showing. It is a pity that even the bookies know how to do the maths, and so Soldatino showing is put at twice the ante, and so not convenient at all!

You may not get rich, but you've just discovered a fundamental theorem of probability, Bayes' theorem. In this formulation, the theorem says that the odds of Soldatino showing on heavy ground, i.e. the ratio between the number of times it arrives within third place and the number of races in which it ranks from fourth place down - let's call it O (showing | heavy) - is equal to the odds of showing on any ground - let's similarly call it O (showing) - multiplied by the ratio of the probability that the soil is heavy in the event of showing - P (heavy | showing) - and the ratio that the ground is heavy when Soldatino does not show - P (heavy | not-showing) - (this ratio is called the "likelihood ratio"). In summary:

O (showing | heavy ) = O (showing) * P(heavy | showing) / P(heavy | not showing.)

or, in our case::

O (showing | heavy ) = 7:98 *0.70 / 0.10 = 7:98 * 7 = 49:98 = 1:2

This formulation of Bayes' theorem can be generalized to the case where we are interested in, rather than Soldatino showing, a general hypothesis 'H ' and how it changes its odds when we know that the event 'E' occurred:

O (H | E) = O (H) * P (E | H) / P (E | ¬ H)

where O (H) are the odds of the hypothesis 'H', before taking event 'E' into account as evidence, P (E | H) is the probability to observe event 'E' when the hypothesis 'H' is true, P (E | ¬ H) the probability to observe event 'E' when the hypothesis 'H' is false, and O (H | E) are the odds of hypothesis 'H' after taking event 'E' into account as evidence.

But what does this story have in common with the resurrection of Jesus? Something indeed...

Ian Pollock, «Odds again: Bayes made usable», Rationally Speaking, November 29th, 2012. The photo is «Horse racing», by Paolo Camera.
The article was slightly reworded on December 5th, to take into account some clarifications by Mr. Pollock.