• Question: Is it possible to influence probability in your daily lives quickly to make us happier?

    Asked by Elizabeth to Sophie on 2 Jan 2020.
    • Photo: Sophie Carr

      Sophie Carr answered on 2 Jan 2020:


      This is a really hard question as happiness is subjective – what makes me happy might not make anyone else happy. Can you probability influence your mood? I would say yes because working on probability makes me happy very quickly – but it can also be incredibly frustrating, infuriating and hard. So I guess the question is what is that you want to influence to make you happy? You can use maths to work out the quickest travel time, how to get the biggest piece of cake and it helps with homework. Once you know what it is you want to influence, you’ll be able to see where maths can help. That’s not to say it will definitely make you happy! Maths can’t always answer tricky questions about emotions but it can help us to understand how we can get the most or least of something. I hope this answers your question, it was really hard and made me think about how to answer it.

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