If I had four ping pong balls numbered 1 to 4, and I reached my hand into a basket and randomly drew one of the balls out of the basket, the odds of my drawing out the number one ball the first time would be 1 in 4. Assuming I didn’t put the balls back into the basket each time I drew one out, and if I ran this experiment thousands of times, on average, the odds of my drawing all four balls out in order would occur, 1 in every 24 tries [4 x 3 x 2 x 1=24]. Now, instead of four balls, what if you had 300 ping pong balls, and they were numbered consecutively from 1 to 300. [Think of it as a giant lottery. Just pull all 300 balls out in sequence, and you win the wealth of the entire world.] So, what are the odds you could randomly draw all 300 balls out in the right sequence? The odds of you drawing the number one ball would be 1 in 300. The odds of getting all 300 balls in order would be 300 x 299 x 298 . . . x 2 x 1. That equals 1 x 10 614 ,
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