LIKELIHOOD AND IMPROBABILITY
Extraordinary chances come to the “picking-up” collector, I know, but he does well to keep in mind the probability or the unlikelihood of his “find” being real. It is unlikely that he should more than once happen upon a Jacobite glass, for example; and again, if he sees a fine “Trafalgar” glass exhibited in a small jeweller’s shop, with no other glass at all or any other “curios,” the probability is that some fraudulent person has planted that false glass there, in what is a likely place to attract and deceive a collector who “picks up.”