Note:
(a) "How could a mother lie about being a mother? Not ethically, but logistically? Maybe a liar would wait until the man is smitten, then spring the child on him and shout, 'Surprise! "
spring (vt): "to produce or disclose suddenly or unexpectedly" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spring
(b) "I met a man who humble-bragged about the $10,000-a-month child support his ex-wife demanded for his daughters' clothing allowance."
humblebrag (n, vi): "make an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement with the actual intention of drawing attention to something of which one is proud" www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... _english/humblebrag
(c) "I was the one who contacted him. We had both joined a dating service called * * * The Right Stuff, after seeing an ad for it in The New Yorker. 'I liked your profile,” he wrote in his first email, 'but didn't contact you because you have a child.' * * * He responded to my first email: 'A redheaded editor in Brooklyn — what could be better? But dating a woman with a child would be complicated, as I'm sure you know."
The woman contacted the man first, although the man had noticed her profile but chose not to act, because she had a kid. When he was contacted for the first time, he wrote back, with the TWO remarks -- among others -- found in the quotation.
(d) "That summer we both had travel plans, so a whole month passed before our first date — or our first 'playdate,' I guess. * * * Months later, James met my son, Jonah. * * * The next day, Jonah asked, 'Can I have another playdate with my new friend?' "
(e) "An economist, he would answer a question with: 'Probability of 1.' * * * Trying to think like a statistician, I [an editor] put my odds at 50-50. Or, as an economist would say: probability 0.5."
(i) almost surely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely
("In probability theory, one says that an event happens almost surely * * * if it happens with probability one. * * * Almost never describes the opposite of almost surely: an event that happens with probability zero happens almost never" / section 2 " 'Almost sure' versus 'sure' ")
(ii) Why the range of probability is always between 0 and 1?
Basics of Probability. Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, Aug 27 and Sept 1, 2009 http://math.arizona.edu/~jwatkins/a-basics.pdf
(page 1: definition of S ("sample space": all possible outcomes), A ("event") and P ("probability") / page 4: "[section] 4 Equally Likely Outcomes, where P = 0.5 (plus explaining why the range is 0 to 1)
(iii) There is, in the whole world, just one economist named James Harrigan. Now in Virginia, he was in New York City.
, whose "CV" shows he was
"Research Officer and Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2005-2008. Senior Economist 1997-2004, Economist 1996-1997."