Odds

Odds are a excellent Canadian band that are no longer together. Famous songs include Heterosexual Man, Eat My Brain, et cetera. They were close to the members of the Kids in the Hall. The members of Odds are Paul Brennan, Steven Drake, Doug Elliot, and Craig Northey. If you include Bruce McCulloch in the group, they are called Death Lurks instead.

The term "odds" is used to describe the likelihood of an event occurring.

A person or bookmaker or casino will quote the odds at which it is prepared to accept a bet from a punter. A statistician will use the term probability for the same pupose.

Odds are commonly quoted using two different schemes. Decimal and traditional.

Decimal odds are expressed as a single number being the sum of a notional unit stake from the backer and the corresonding stake from the layer. This single number represents the total payout (i.e. including the backer's stake) should the backer be successful. It is the reciprocal of the probability.

Traditional odds are expressed as a ratio of the two stakes. Usually the layer's stake is the first number and the backer's the second. The word "on" is used to reverse the order.

This is all best illustrated by example:

Probabilty 0.2 = Decimal odds 5   = Tradional 4 to 1
Probabilty 0.5 = Decimal odds 2   = Tradional 1 to 1
Probabilty 0.8 = Decimal odds 1.2 = Tradional 4 to 1 ON
Probabilty 0.4 = Decimal odds 2.5 = Tradional 3 to 2
Probabilty 0.01= Decimal odds 100 = Tradional 99 to 1

Odds (?), n. sing. & pl. [See Odd, a.]

1.

Difference in favor of one and against another; excess of one of two things or numbers over the other; inequality; advantage; superiority; hence, excess of chances; probability.

"Preeminent by so much odds."

Milton.

"The fearful odds of that unequal fray."

Trench.

The odds
Is that we scare are men and you are gods.
Shak.

There appeared, at least, four to one odds against them.
Swift.

All the odds between them has been the different s "cope....given to their understandings to range in.
Locke.

Judging is balancing an account and determining on which side the odds lie.
Locke.

2.

Quarrel; dispute; debate; strife; -- chiefly in the phraze at odds.

Set them into confounding odds.
Shak.

I can not speak
Any beginning to this peevish odds.
Shak.

At odds, in dispute; at variance. "These squires at odds did fall." Spenser. "He flashes into one gross crime or other, that sets us all at odds." Shak. -- It is odds, it is probable. [Obs.]<-- = "odds are" --> Jer. Taylor. -- Odds and ends, that which is left; remnants; fragments; refuse; scraps; miscellaneous articles. "My brain is filled...with all kinds of odds and ends." W. Irving.

 

© Webster 1913.