For proof of this, you need only look at the multi-billion-pound gambling industry. Bookmakers and casinos profit because we find it hard to evaluate odds and probabilities. I am reminded of an intelligent friend who couldn’t understand that buying two different tickets doubled your chances of winning the lottery with one ticket, but that you had to buy 14 million different tickets to be pretty much guaranteed a win.

In this vein, TV-hungry uber-mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explains a cunning probability problem to the wonderful Alan Davies (a man paid to act the dunce on BBC’s QI but who, I suspect, knows almost as much as the Fryster himself…).

The Monty Hall problem is the general name for a puzzle based on a common game-show scenario. I’ll let you watch Marcus and Alan explain all, or you can watch Kevin Spacey and an unnaturally attentive maths class discuss it, from the maths-and-gambling movie ‘21′, below.

Of course, Maths-Whizzers know full well the importance of probability. We start to introduce the concept in Key Stage 2 maths and students are evaluating complex probablity scenarios by year 8.