history
strangest. coincidence. ever.
by anders pearson
Wed 01 Oct 2003 09:30:41
a couple weeks ago, we hired a few CS students part-time to help out at <a href="http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/">the center</a>.
this morning, one of them, Davang, a first year grad student stops me as i walk into the office. "is your full name 'anders pearson'?" "yes, it is." "is this yours?" and hands me a Time Warner Cable bill with my name and (new) address on it. "where did you get this?" "it came in my mail."
my first thought was that maybe he'd moved into my old apartment by some coincidence and they had somehow gotten things confused with my account. but he lives somewhere entirely different. apparently, my statement came in the same envelope as his, which was properly addressed to him.
so it looks like somehow, the people or machines stuffing envelopes got the two statements stuck together and put into the same envelope. the bizarre coincidence is that of all the 11 million people in new york that it could have gone to, it went to someone in my office.
well, they probably divide things up into neighborhoods so the fact that he lives relatively close to me made it more likely. also, i started the account in the last month, and since he moved into the city at around the same time, his account was probably started at nearly the same time, which would make the account numbers close. so it's not quite the 1 in 11 million chance that it looks like (or 30 in 11 million if you consider that it could have been anyone in the office), but i think it was still pretty unlikely. i'd say probably worse than 1 in 100,000. still not odds that i'd have bet on.
comments
lani - Wed 01 Oct 2003 09:31:41
does that mean that you've screwed your odds for something equally unlikely to happen in the future? (i'm still innumerate. [hangs head in shame])anders pearson - Wed 01 Oct 2003 09:33:41
no. as long as the other unlikely things are independent. one of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0809058405/">Innumeracy</a>'s main points is that while the chances of a particular event happening may be extremely low, in the long run, the chance of <em>some</em> generic "unlikely" events occuring is almost a certainty. one of the other main points to remember is our natural tendency to focus on successes and ignore failures. eg, if my bill had been delivered to someone who didn't know me, it would have been just another lost bill and i never would have thought anything of it. those kinds of things happen constantly and we filter them out and instead focus on the rare cases and assign meaning to them. (if anyone out there hasn't read <i>Innumeracy</i>, i highly recommend it.)Luke Shorty - Wed 01 Oct 2003 09:32:41
You know what would be interesting to calculate? The probability of N generic "unlikely" events to happen in the average life time. I don't think Innumeracy covered it, but it would be an interesting thing to calculate. That is a pretty sweet coincidence though Anders, a good story to tell at a party should the opportunity arise.