Dr. Seth Brown illustrates the power of math in solving serious real-world problems:
No one seemed to know exactly when my flight would depart and I was concerned that if I chose to eat at Custom Burgers I might miss my departing flight. There were only 5 flights ahead of me in the queue and I didn’t want to get stranded in LGA overnight nor did I want to miss eating at Custom Burger. This provoked an interesting question—how to estimate the probability that I could eat at Pat’s restaurant without missing my flight?