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Vladimir_Nesov comments on The Cognitive Science of Rationality - Less Wrong
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Comments (102)
Should be "one to a million".
Biased response: as a native American English speaker I can assure you that "a million to one" is idiomatically correct.
I suspect that the more complete non-idiomatic version would be "a million to one against" and that the "against" is implicit because the idiom is highly established as expressing a very low probability.
I think "one IN a million" is the more common usage in American English.
Technically, "one in a million" and "one to a million" differ. The latter is 1/1000001000000 smaller.
Common usage puts the other one first: "The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one"
Perhaps what people have in mind when they say that are betting odds. If you bet money on an unlikely event then the odds are quoted with the high number (your reward if the event occurs) first, which seems sensible from an advertising perspective.
This is an unfortunate shortening of "a million to one against", which would be correct.
I thought that "a million to one" always meant "a million to one against", and you had to specify "a million to one on" when necessary.
My survey of one agrees with you - I would definitely have thought of this the other way around though.
Thanks!
If John's physician prescribed a burdensome treatment because of a test whose false-positive rate is 99.9999%, John needs a lawyer rather than a statistician. :)
True, that! :)