The Average Does Not Matter Biologist Stephen Jay Gould was told he was dying of a rare form of cancer. His time on this earth was limited. Depression set in. However, a strange thing happened on his way to the Grim Reaper. His research found that people with his characteristics were in the statistical tail of the mathematical probabilities related to the chance of death. Instead, there was a very good chance that he would beat the normal odds of survival. Indeed he did, and