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Athildur t1_j6nyzqa wrote

Reply to comment by Dookie_-_Monster in TIL That the character who first said the phrase "fortune favours the bold" - Turnus, in the Aeneid, spends the rest of the story suffering military defeats before he's killed and heads to the underworld, miserable, at the end of the last book. by Equal_Caregiver_4909

So let's say...10 papers.

Chance of any one to be picked blindly: 1/10.

Chance any one is discarded into the trash: 5/10 (not 1/5 as you said, it should be .5n/n, or just 50%).

Chance for any one paper being picked out of the trash: 1/5 (since there are 5 in the trash).

1/5 of 5/10 is 1/10. Which is the chance we started with by just picking at random.

So no. Getting the paper out of the garbage isn't less likely at all in your example. The only factor not included here is the likeliness that one is picked from the trash at all. Since, if this were an uncommon event, it would make chances lower. But since this experiment presumes doing so is already predetermined (since you've built this selection method purposely), it adds no rarity or value.

In fact, since you premeditated this, arguably the stack in the trash is less lucky since you already decided at the start you'd pick one of those.

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