4 8 15 16 23 42

Our obsession with "Lost" grows without inhibition. Though some of us are far beyond help our little troupe of obsessive media consumers will quickly become a codependent insanity that I don't know I can extricate myself from without professional help. Though I readily admit our geekiness there are occurances that an educated, logic-minded man such as myself would have trouble reconciling.

An Example: Jim has this old slot machine in the house. Thats odd enough as it is, but we tacitly accept his addiction to gambling and move on, hoping he finds someone who will be willing to help him with his inevitebly bankrupting obsession. I've played this machine a few times when bored or inspired and found it fairly mundane. It has 4 buttons, 1 for starting the machine and 3 for stopping each individual slot.

Now, putting that aside for a moment lets discuss Hurley's numbers. If you watch the show you know that the set of numbers {4 8 15 16 23 42} has, within our little world of suspended disbelief, magical and likely sinister properties. Hurley used them to play the lottery, won the lottery, and subsequently everyone around him began having bad luck.

If you used this sequence of numbers to choose which button on jim's slot machine to hit in which order, you have roughly a 70-80% chance that you will get three in a row. Not only will you get 3 in a row, but you will get 3 /islands/ in a row.

Wrap your head around that little tidbit.