> For example, just the other day I was on the London Underground, and I 
> wondered: How the **** do they get the trains onto the track? Something 
> like the Circle line is completely subterranian, and I'm pretty sure the 
> factory where they make the carrages isn't. And it's not like you can just 
> take a train carrage down the escalator with you...

The Circle line will have connections to other tracks that come up above 
ground.  There are lots of connections that are not marked on the public 
underground map.  They are needed for things like train repairs and 
replacements, and if some lines have fewer trains during busy periods, they 
need somewhere to park the other trains!

> This analysis works only if events are statistically *independent*, of 
> course. In the case of a flood, they might not be.

Yep, floods are influenced by things like sun-spots, which follow patterns.

> In the second analysis, if a dice is rolled and almost never turns up a 6, 
> this could be taken as evidence that the dice is biased, in which case the 
> probability is not actually 1/6.

Also the probability of a flood likely changes dramatically over time, 
before you get a chance to calculate a good estimate of the probability.

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