THE human mind is not naturally good at understanding how probability works, and that’s increasingly a problem as cynical players work to exploit this chink in our intellectual armour.

Globally, cars killed 1.24 million people in the year 2010 compared to the five or six souls a year claimed by sharks. For some reason we fear, and in some cases hate, sharks but embrace cars in every aspect of our lives. I long for the day WA commences a car cull. (Sadly, the oft repeated claim that falling coconuts kill 150 people every year turns out to be an untrue urban myth).

Pop Quiz: Name a VC winner from the war in Afghanistan? Most people can name at least one of the four.

But can you name the Australians killed in the fighting in Afghanistan? There are more than 40 of them. How about the wounded? All 256 of them.

We remember the gallantry and our minds skip over the cost, it’s an entirely natural and human thing to do, but it probably doesn’t help our decision making.

Closer to home, the gambling industry fleeces billions out of us every year because we can’t face the sheer gravitational certainty of the mathematics.

Even an innumerate, but sufficiently sceptical, mind should be able to figure it out looking at the opulent facility they are gambling in, marvel at the wealth of its owners, at the monumental payroll involved in the teeming staff, and ask: “If all that money is coming from the losses of the gamblers what hope have I got?”

Instead, we go quiet when we lose and we shout loud when we win.

The lotteries advertise with made up stories of a life of luxury after a big win. No-one tells the story of the pensioner who has spent tens of thousands in the course of their life buying little more than hope and the odd carefully calibrated minor win to keep the scent of blood in the nose.

Even closer still to home we have the myth of the pop-up shop.

Having done it myself, I would caution all but my worst enemies against trying to run an under-capitalised business.

But wealthy property developers can find an endless stream of hopeful dreamers willing to pay them rent for the chance to spend months of their lives scrimping and scraping, living without income, and worst of all cutting corners on their beloved product in the hope that any second now their luck is going to change. All the while their struggle is creating the “vibrant, quirky, edgy, street feel” that translates to cold hard cash for the developer.

Someone somewhere had a big win. “That pop-up shop is now a big brand with a chain of stores!” That’s all most of us look at. The human wreckage of the probable outcomes is not something we like to think about, so we don’t.

There are two morals here:

1. Learn how probability works and avail yourself of the endless statistics available on the internet.
2. If you find yourself playing a losing game, stop playing. Chances are bad luck is not the reason you’re losing.