Probability Term for something that defies the odds. I'm not a mathematician; I just wandered over here from Writers SE and am hoping you guys can help.
I'm writing a novel in which the theme is characters beating the odds. (It's a future dystopia, the government is super-powerful, etc. - the characters aren't doing any actual math). I'm looking for a term for a character who beats the odds. (I'm looking for gambling terms AND probability terms). So, going in, probability said that x was very likely to happen. But then y happened, instead.  Is there a term for y, after the event is over? (look at me trying to be all math-y - hopefully someone can edit this to be more coherent). In gambling terms, I'm looking for a word that would mean the dark horse or underdog AFTER he's won. Maybe math doesn't personalize things so much, and there just isn't a term, but if there is one, I'd love to know about it!
Thanks!
 A: "Outlier" was the one that popped into my head. In statistics an observation (say an individual) is an outlier if whatever model you are using to explain the underlying phenomenon effectively fails to allow for such an extreme observation. That is, outliers are observations that make us doubt the validity of our model. Some might take an outlier to be something a little bit weaker, e.g. just a really unlikely measurement that nevertheless doesn't cause us to reconsider our underlying model.
A: This is probably boring, but the term "almost never" is used to describe an event that is, in a technical sense, infinitely unlikely. Such events are also said to have "measure zero", which is considerably sexier, but might require some explanation, which you hoped to avoid. The set itself is sometimes referred to as a "null set", which also would require some amount of explanation.
A: Black Swan?
"...."black swan theory" refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences..."
It is also the name of one of Nassim Taleb's books
He defines it as "A black swan is an event, positive or negative, that is deemed improbable yet causes massive consequences"
