Nautilus

Our Strange Relationship to World Cup Probabilities

What this World Cup reveals isn’t that the stats were wrong—far from it, they were insightfully calculated—but rather that we relate to stats and probabilities in strange ways.Photograph by Hey! Play! / Wayfair

his year’s World Cup has been full of surprises. Tournament mainstays such as the Netherlands and Italy didn’t even qualify, and Germany, the reigning world champions, finished last in their group after upsets

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