The Wheel of Chance

Dis my jam.

Book club time! Recently I read a book called The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.  Mostly, it was about the history of probability theory and how people really don't understand the concept of randomness.  So, mostly it was a nerdy math book for nerdy math dweebs like myself who think Pascal is the bee's knees. 
But the final chapter of the book ventured into unexpected territory about how society judges success based on performance.  The author discussed hedge fund managers, baseball players, and major CEOs who have either been lauded or damned for their "streakiness".  It turns out, though highly counter-intuitive, that generally people perform about the same year in, year our.  Statistical anomalies, such as a hot streak or a bunch of tanked failures, are rare but not that unlikely given everyone's average performance in a given field.

Of course, in my day job, there is no better probability calculation than professional auditions.  With the field narrowed down from 100 to 8 to 3 to 1 (or none, in most auditions these days....), you have some serious roulette wheel action happening.  And once you take more than about, say, three auditions you start to realize how fantastically idealistic the audition process is.  There is a huge component of randomness not only in how particular musicians perform but in how the committee listens and reacts to certain players.  That's not to say that you aren't in control of your own performance; there are a gajillion practice strategies, mental training activities, and weird food and drug recommendations that enable you to combat the grueling firing squad of an orchestral audition committee.  But I don't believe that as an auditioner you are in control of your own destiny; not even a little bit.
There are certain individuals, and I'm friends with a couple of them, who are amazingly consistent auditioners.  But even consistent auditioners lose about 90% of the auditions they take.  It's depressing from a statistical point of view, but the optimistic other side of the coin is losing an audition puts you in pretty good company.  And at this point, my field is starting to evolve to appreciate the fact that auditions are not the only indicator of artistic success.

Sometimes internet memes speak the truth.

So really, we're all in this cesspool of random dice tosses together.  And you just can never predict which statistical anomaly will be your statistical anomaly!  That may just lead to something awesome like, ya know, stable health insurance.