Historical Likelihood expressed as Percentages

hammo1j

Donor
I have just had a thought that it might be useful for Historians and Alternate Historians to talk about the %age probability of something happening to give an idea how truly likely events were.

I came up with:

OTL Barbarossa succeeds = 25% (ie in 100 AH Alternate Universes 25 of them have the Nazis triumphant in the East.

1. Sealion succeeds as planned 2%.

2. Germany conquers US, USSR, UK 0.00001% - impossible from word go which shows how mad AH was.

3. US wins Vietnam 45%

4. Germany wins WWI 18%

5. Japan gets truce with US on its terms keeping sphere of influence (original aim of their attack not to invade US) 1% (again quite mad).

I am a betting man and it is quite interesting to see the events expressed as Odds because it immediately gives a very clear picture and thus is a good basis for a (constructive) argument.

I would be interested to know whether AH'ers agree with the odds I have posted and I'd like those in the know to give some odds for areas of history where the figure might be surprising.

Regards

hammo1j
 

MrP

Banned
It'd be interesting to know how you came up with the percentages.

Indeed. Percentages solidify things to a great deal and suggest a lot of underlying work. I for one am too lazy to do that much work, so I quite like a sliding scale of probability.

  1. Inevitable
  2. Probable
  3. Improbable
  4. Impossible

With various sub-levels qualifying the above.
 
I suspect that a US triumph in Vietnam is much less likely than your figures suggest. Maybe a success for Barborossa is slightly lower.

Sealion coming off was maybe slightly more than 5% possible. And there might have been other ways the Nazis could have conquered my land (Britain)
 
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