'... As Sub-Lunar pointed out in those early years, p-math depended on a certain innate mental agility. Many superb practitioners were also incurably insane, possibly because of that very fact. Leaving aside that very special sub-group to which Sub-Lunar himself belonged - I say no more - the rest were usually highly educated and, in a word, lucky. (Luck being a function of the p-math talent, of course.) Many of them worked for the Joker Institute.

'Such a streak ran through the Sabalos family of Widdershins. For those of you who do not know the world, it is...'

'... just before the birth of his son and his own assassination in the marshes, John III predicted that the boy would die also on the day of his investiture as Chairman of the Planetary Board. The chance of this not happening was so remote as to make a billion-to-one long shot appear a fifty-fifty bet. Yes? I'm sorry. Perhaps I should explain.

'Suppose p-math had not been discovered. Now, on Earth there was a creature called a horse. Long ago it was realized that if a number of these animals were raced over a set distance one must surely prove faster than the others, and from this there was...'

'... back to the subject in hand. One anomaly in p-math concerned the Jokers, those semi-mythical beings who had left artifacts strewn around half the galaxy. Solid artifacts, indeed, most of them gigantic. According to probability math, the builders of these latter-day tourist attractions had never, ever existed...'

His Furness Dr CrAarg + 458°, in an informal lecture to students at Dis university, A.S. 5,201

Dom woke early, and spent a long time staring at the familiar ceiling paintings of his dome. They had been done by his great-grandfather, in gaudy blues and greens, and depicted a trio of overmuscled fishermen battling an enraged dagon. That was a slander on the dagons, Dom knew: they lacked a nervous system and it was doubtful if they ever thought. They just reacted.