The Odds of Being a 6'6'' Redhead

You always wanted to know...

Even in the Middle Ages, Redheads were Boss!

I learned/figured out some interesting things today.  Granted, the things I learned all directly apply to me, so this post is perhaps one of my most narcissistic posts ever, BUT I still thought it was interesting enough to let everyone know. 

I'm 6'6'' and only 1/4 of 1% of the world's population is that height.  That number looks like this: 0.0025.   Pretty cool huh? 

So I thought about this, and applied it to the fact that only 2% (0.02) of the world's population is red haired.  

In case you forgot middle school math, the way you find out the odds of two percentages coming together is to simply multiply them.  THEREFORE, a red head being 6'6'' or above is going to be extremely rare... about 0.00005 % of the population.  Whoa!  Now I feel as random as a purple tiger or something like it!

But even though those odds are long... let me give you some food for thought.  I went to high school with a red head who was also 6'6'' or thereabouts (I remember having him edged in height, but sometimes the memory a guy has of his high school days are exaggerated come 10+ years later... e.g. Uncle Rico's hilarious line, "How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?").  So since there were two of us in one high school, us 6'6'' redheads can't be THAT rare, can we?  

Well, if you multiply 0.00005% times the current world population of 7.1 billion, you'll see that there are plenty of tall redheads!  355,000 of them to be precise!  That's about the population of the Bahamas... a nice country, but probably not the best for tall redheads since they get sunburned easily and sometimes are so large that their friends meanly call them "Moby Dick" when they go swimming (yes, this actually happened to me!)

And before you go and stereotype all redheads as being Irish or even European, let me just tell you, there are people groups (some of them with very dark skin) from China, Papua New Guinea and the Middle East and North Africa (mostly areas in the former Ottoman Empire, usually Berber populations people but also including Jews) that are known for having red hair.   

Thus ends my strange, rambling combination of random facts and math.