If Jenny doesn't hit a home run her team will be so discouraged they will quit and forfeit. OK, maybe not helpful.

Trust me, I'm not getting confused by an excess of baseball knowledge on this one.

So "if X then Y" is the same as "if not Y, then not X" - Y is the bigger group, it can include X inside it.

If Nilly says this is true-enough-for-such-games, even if not strictly true all the time, that is good enough for me. I kept thinking it wasn't true, which is what screwed with me. (I always turn word problems into Xs and Ys, because I used to get more confused if I was thinking about specifics. Apparently, this is a case where that was not helpful to me.)

they would've won no matter what if she did hit a home run, then she must not have hit one.

This actually makes it make more sense to me.

Okay, thanks. Except I feel dumb now.

Best. CD. Ever.

Revenge CD and Earplugs:

A great way to get back at those noisy neighbors! Give them a taste of their own medicine with any one of these 20 ear-splitting sound effect tracks. Anyone who's ever lived in an apartment will really appreciate this hilarious CD. Earplugs supplied for your listening pleasure. Imported from France.

Tracks include: 1) Drill; 2) Party (At Least 200 People); 3) Orgasm (Outstanding); 4) Train; 5) Drum (Played by a Child); 6) Inhuman Screams; 7) Walking (High Heels); 8) Domestic Squabble; 9) Doors Banging; 10) Bowling; 11) Unhappy Dog; 12) Practicing Scales (Violin); 13) Traffic Jam; 14) Garbage Truck; 15) Newborn; 16) Phone Ringing; 17) Ball Game; 18) Pigeons; 19) Spring Cleaning; and 20) Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!

Last week I received an example of the kind of thing that may have made Lyra suspicious of the logic of answer C in the real world. It was in a newsletter from State Farm Insurance. The headline asked, "Is your car at increased risk of being stolen?" Then they gave a list of "high risk" cars, which, surprisingly, did not include Porsches or Corvettes but instead the Camry, Accord and Ford pickup truck.

Obviously, the data that they had were that if a car is stolen, it is more likely to be fall into this group of cars. This is hardly suprising because there are more of these popular cars in every city in America than there are Porsches or Corvettes in the whole country. They twisted this conditional probability P(car type/stolen) around to the opposite conditional probability: if a car falls into this group, it is more likely to be stolen P(stolen/car type). There is no necessary equivalence between P(A/B) and P(B/A), but the human brain seems to be prepared to treat them as equivalent.

I can only hope that it was State Farm's marketing group who came up with this, not their actuaries.

the only thing missing from that CD is "alarm you left on while gone on vacation" which might be the most annoying neighbor noise I ever had.

Except I feel dumb now.

Ehh, don't.

I also want one of these.

I tripped over my dog while walking her this morning. In trying to avoid hurting her, I took a header onto the sidewalk and now have a swollen lip, a bruised nose and a scraped-up hand. Also skinned both knees. I am just happy I didn't break anything or chip a tooth.

Not my most graceful moment!

Except I feel dumb now.

I have to draw circles in my mind (oh, scary visual place of mine) in order to figure these things out. You're not alone, or I'm in good company, whichever way you prefer to see it.

[Edited to {{Robin}} Glad no big damage was done. Oh, and in a lame attempt for a silver lining, that you have a dog to trip on?]

I also want one of these.

Archie McPhee has those!

(Also, I keep meaning to say, I giggle every time I read your tagline.)