"It is not impossible, but it is just very improbable".
Hughes understands just how improbable it was for her to pass all three skaters.
There are just three, improbable, survivors; children, found alive at three of the crash scenes.
In its own way, Loux's success is just as improbable, a different kind of triumph on a much smaller scale.
In an e-mail, Wong told me, "Most people just assume improbable events don't happen, but technical people tend to view risk very mathematically".
At this week's Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, an N.B.A. predraft camp for college seniors, the autograph requests have been more traditional but just as improbable.
It is then, and only then, that we will discover the true Syria, whether it was just an improbable creation set on the banks of the Euphrates, or a real nation after all.
The regime can survive by further confining its area of control to the western area of the country, where its grip is firmest.A political solution looks just as improbable.
