Mathematics in the Financial Industry
The bank manager pauses for a moment as if expecting you to respond somehow, but you can't think of anything in particular to say right now.
"Uh, okay, I think I'm supposed to talk about probability next."
"A probability is just a number from zero to one that describes how likely something is to happen. Zero means it's impossible, one means it's definitely going to happen, and 0.5 means it has a fifty-fifty chance. If I flip a coin, the probability of it landing on heads is one-half. If I two six-sided dice, the probability of getting snake eyes is about 0.03, or one divided by thirty-six. This is because there are thirty-six possible outcomes—six outcomes for the first die, six for the second, and you multiply them—and only one of them is snake eyes."