Let’s say that M&M’s candies pop out of the Earth, more or less randomly, at a rate of, I don’t know, say five million a year. Further, let’s say that those M&M’s come in the standard assortment of colors, typically brown, green, orange, yellow, blue, and finally, red. Sometimes, before it is found, a red M&M fades and becomes pink. This doesn’t happen often, but it does happen often enough that people start to investigate pink M&M’s. Let’s say that a hundred intrepid M&M collectors begin collecting the pink ones, and are pretty successful at collecting them, and more importantly, they figure out why red M&M’s turn pink (it turns out that before they’re found they’re left in the rain, then the sun bleaches them). So you end up with collections of pink M&M’s in a few homes of avid collectors. Naturally occurring M&M’s should appear roughly one every ten square miles, and assuming an equal distribution of colors, one in six is red, so a red one should be found once a year (on average) in a 60 square mile area, and some of those reds turn pink, but others do not. Your neighbor just happens to be one of the pink M&M collectors and you are walking along, a block from his house and you find a pink M&M. Not only that, a dozen other people also find Pink M&M’s as well, all within a couple blocks. What are the odds this is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has nothing to do with your neighbor and his (or her) hobby?

UPDATE: Originally posted May 10th. Reposted today because John Stewart.

I rarely update posts, but John Stewart had to pick on Hershey Pennsylvania. I wonder if he reads my blog. Granted, I was few weeks early on this, but when am I not.