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Scientific American

August 1, 2004

1 min read

Miracle on Probability Street

The Law of Large Numbers guarantees that one-in-a-million miracles happen 295 times a day in America

By Michael Shermer

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Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia (Henry Holt, 2018).

More by Michael Shermer

This article was originally published with the title “Miracle on Probability Street” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 291 No. 2 (August 2004)

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