Some people think that personally significant numbers cropping up in their daily lives is some kind of meaningful sign. For instance, seeing a license plate with their birth year on it, or a dead friend’s old house number being the price of their grocery shop.
I find myself getting very irritated with family members who believe this.
I don’t think anybody reading this is the kind of person who needs to read it. But these family members are not the kind of person who would read an explanation of why it’s ridiculous, and I’m irritated enough that I need to write one. So you guys get to read it instead!
Any person will have many numbers that they might consider significant—if you have 20 people you are close to, you have 20 4-digit combinations of day-month that are meaningful to you. But wait, you also have 20 more combinations of month-day. And perhaps you would notice if you saw the birth years of the 5 of those people you are closest to. That’s 5 more.
So we’ve come up with a few dozen significant 4 digit numbers from birthdates alone. But you probably have lots more significant numbers. Perhaps your age, or the age you met your wife, or the year your parents met, or the postcode of your first apartment, or the postcode of your second apartment or the combinations of any of these, or, or, or, …
Let’s be extremely conservative and say you have 20 significant 4-digit numbers. Let’s also be conservative and say you only consider 4-digit numbers significant, and ignore all your 2, 3 and 5-digit significant numbers.
How many 4-digit numbers do you see a day? Let’s again be extremely conservative and say 30. You look at the time on your phone a few dozen times a day, you get rung up for $12.78 at the convenience store, etc.
Finally, let’s make various naive independence and uniformity assumptions.
So how long is it going to take to see one of your significant numbers, simply by chance? Well, given our assumptions, you will receive a “message from the universe” around once every… 16 days.
Consider the fact that our assumptions were absurdly conservative, and you can see why I find it hard to take seriously the fact that you saw your first credit card’s pin number on the number of calories in a pack of cookies.
Some people think that personally significant numbers cropping up in their daily lives is some kind of meaningful sign. For instance, seeing a license plate with their birth year on it, or a dead friend’s old house number being the price of their grocery shop.
I find myself getting very irritated with family members who believe this.
I don’t think anybody reading this is the kind of person who needs to read it. But these family members are not the kind of person who would read an explanation of why it’s ridiculous, and I’m irritated enough that I need to write one. So you guys get to read it instead!
Any person will have many numbers that they might consider significant—if you have 20 people you are close to, you have 20 4-digit combinations of day-month that are meaningful to you. But wait, you also have 20 more combinations of month-day. And perhaps you would notice if you saw the birth years of the 5 of those people you are closest to. That’s 5 more.
So we’ve come up with a few dozen significant 4 digit numbers from birthdates alone. But you probably have lots more significant numbers. Perhaps your age, or the age you met your wife, or the year your parents met, or the postcode of your first apartment, or the postcode of your second apartment or the combinations of any of these, or, or, or, …
Let’s be extremely conservative and say you have 20 significant 4-digit numbers. Let’s also be conservative and say you only consider 4-digit numbers significant, and ignore all your 2, 3 and 5-digit significant numbers.
How many 4-digit numbers do you see a day? Let’s again be extremely conservative and say 30. You look at the time on your phone a few dozen times a day, you get rung up for $12.78 at the convenience store, etc.
Finally, let’s make various naive independence and uniformity assumptions.
So how long is it going to take to see one of your significant numbers, simply by chance? Well, given our assumptions, you will receive a “message from the universe” around once every… 16 days.
Consider the fact that our assumptions were absurdly conservative, and you can see why I find it hard to take seriously the fact that you saw your first credit card’s pin number on the number of calories in a pack of cookies.