strangest. coincidence. ever.
By anders pearson 01 Oct 2003
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.