Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a key Renaissance challenger to the prevailing view that the universe revolved around the Earth, and our position as observers is therefore exceptional. An extension of this idea suggests our position as observers is more likely to be average than exceptional. This came to be known as the "Copernican Principle".

J Richard Gott applied this principle to event durations, arguing any observation was more likely to be taken near the middle of an event than at its very beginning or end. Gott developed a simple formula to model this, which can be modified to estimate the likelihood an event ends before a future date:

P(event ends by future date) = Days between future date and now / Days between future date and date event began.

In Excel: =DAYS(future date, TODAY()) / DAYS(future date, date event began).

This profile is a human-enabled statistical "bot". It simply applies this one formula to any question where these two inputs are clear and objective.