In the 1975 Stanley Cup Final, the Buffalo Sabres became and remain the only hockey team
to kill a live animal during a game when a player swatted a bat with their stick.
Shortly thereafter, a mysterious fog emerged in the arena and the players and puck were
at times invisible to spectators.
Although this sounds like it came out of a Halloween movie, the fog was just a result
of unusual heat in Buffalo and a lack of air conditioning.
Another astonishment in the game of hockey is Wayne Gretzky’s 2857 career points, which
has never been rivaled.
Another thing Gretzky is famous for is his quote: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t
take.”
This quote is obviously intended to motivate and inspire, basically saying you can’t
succeed unless you give it a try.
But the quote itself makes no sense.
It is entirely logical to miss all the shots you don’t take.
But at the same time, you make all the shots you don’t take.
In logic, this is what’s known as a vacuous truth, which is a statement that mentions
in an empty set, all components have a certain property.
For example, in this setting, all of the elephants are purple.
You can’t really argue with this, there are no elephants there to disprove it.
All of the elephants in this place are purple.
However, at the exact same time, none of the elephants are purple.
We have two opposite and seemingly contradictory statements, but they can’t contradict since
the subject they are referring to does not exist.
All people in this pool are librarians when there is nobody in the pool.
At the same time, none of the people in this pool are librarians.
In the case of missing all the shots you don’t take, sure it’s true, but at the same time,
you make all of the shots you don’t take since you can’t take a shot you don’t
take.
The intent of the quote is to motivate, but if you scrutinize it under a logical lens,
the quote can be misleading.
Saying the absolute opposite of trying can also lead to success isn’t why the quote
is so popular.
But here’s the thing, Gretzky never said “You miss all of the shots you don’t take.”
He said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Since percents are now involved, we need to step away from logic, and move to mathematics.
Sports is full of percentages.
Baseball has batting average and on-base percentage, basketball has field goal percentage, and
soccer and hockey have shooting percentage and so on.
To calculate a percentage we take the number of successful attempts, and divide that by
the number of total attempts, then multiply by 100.
If a soccer player, or football player in most of the world, scores one goal on two
attempts that equals 0.5 and they have a shooting percentage of 50%.
Seems simple enough.
The thing is, you cannot have a percentage if you have never had an attempt.
You cannot divide by zero.
When you divide by smaller and smaller numbers, the result gets bigger and bigger, and continues
to approach infinity, but does not equal infinity.
As a result, dividing by zero gives an undefined answer.
In the case of the quote, the denominator of the fraction must always be zero.
You can’t take a shot you don’t take, just like you can’t make a video you don’t
make, or sell something you don’t sell.
As long as we don’t start entering alternate dimensions and similar concepts, it makes
no sense.
“You miss an undefined percentage of the shots you don’t take.”
How’s that for motivation.
I suppose that is an appropriate statement considering luck and circumstance do play
a role in success.
Although nobody should rely on improbable or unforeseen events, they will happen.
Like in hockey, if the other team puts the puck in their own net, the last player on
the scoring team to touch it gets the goal.
So you can score without taking a shot.
The future may be uncertain, but until next time, thanks for watching.