It REALLY IS a small world!!! - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Ashman · #1 08-12-2002, 05:30 PM

The strangest thing has happened to me today. I bumped into someone who I have not seen in 11 years!!

To make it even more random, the person came to my office applying for a job position.

And to make things even more random, its my ex girlfriend from when I was 16!!!

What a SMALL World!!

Alon

ericdee · #2 08-12-2002, 05:58 PM

So... did she get the job???

Ashman · #3 08-12-2002, 06:05 PM

shes interviewing very very soon... like in 30 minutes

It would be very weird for me if she ended up getting the job, but I can live with it.

Alon

Kuan · #4 08-12-2002, 07:27 PM

How nice

You can resume where you left off. Tell her she owes you... and your're collecting. Retroactively

Kuan

Ashman · #5 08-12-2002, 08:04 PM

ummm no. This was one of those relationships when I was way immature and didn't know how to treat a lady. so that ship has completely sailed....

Alon

DALE DORIA · #6 08-12-2002, 08:06 PM

And have those 11 years been "kind" to her?

Ashman · #7 08-12-2002, 08:52 PM

as far as looks go, I dunno, when we were in high school, she wore makeup, now she had liek none on, and I barely recognized her.

Alon

unkl300d · #8 08-12-2002, 10:33 PM

That's not random that is Destiny!!!!!!

Look out Alon the hand of fate may be on your shoulder.Better call Madam [Cleo] what's her face from the Bahamas to read your tarot cards over the phone (and take your money ,too!)

Is her name Destiny?????

I bow out. Too supernatural for me.........

ymsin · #9 08-12-2002, 11:49 PM

Any pics to post?

jcd · #10 08-13-2002, 07:59 AM

I was at Colonial Williamsburg with my family this past week on a little vacation. While walking thru the middle of town, I ran into the parents of a kid I coached in ice hockey about 20 years ago. Their son now has 3 kids.

Small world indeed and I'm getting old.

JCD

#11 08-13-2002, 11:49 PM

Ashman,

Not really related to your story, but...

A few years ago my dad and his wife (living in Virginia) were vacationing in Miami Florida. She stepped into a store while my dad stayed outside to have a cigarette. Next thing he knew, he spots our next door neighbor walking accross the parking lot. Big deal?? We lived next to them in Maryland and they hadn't seen each other since we moved out of that neighborhood twenty years ago!!

Go figure... it's a small world after all...

yal · #12 08-14-2002, 10:25 AM

You guys need to read the New York Times Magazine article (august 11,2002/ section 6) by Lisa Belkin called "The odds of that". Very interesting and thought provoking.....here is a "little" quote from it :-

"When these professors talk, they do so slowly, aware that what they are saying is deeply counterintuitive. No sooner have they finished explaining that the world is huge and that any number of unlikely things are likely to happen than they shift gears and explain that the world is also quite small, which explains an entire other type of coincidence. One relatively simple example of this is ''the birthday problem.'' There are as many as 366 days in a year (accounting for leap years), and so you would have to assemble 367 people in a room to absolutely guarantee that two of them have the same birthday. But how many people would you need in that room to guarantee a 50 percent chance of at least one birthday match?

Intuitively, you assume that the answer should be a relatively large number. And in fact, most people's first guess is 183, half of 366. But the actual answer is 23. In Paulos's book, he explains the math this way: ''[T]he number of ways in which five dates can be chosen (allowing for repetitions) is (365 x 365 x 365 x 365 x 365). Of all these 3655 ways, however, only (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) are such that no two of the dates are the same; any of the 365 days can be chosen first, any of the remaining 364 can be chosen second and so on. Thus, by dividing this latter product (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) by 3655, we get the probability that five persons chosen at random will have no birthday in common. Now, if we subtract this probability from 1 (or from 100 percent if we're dealing with percentages), we get the complementary probability that at least two of the five people do have a birthday in common. A similar calculation using 23 rather than 5 yields 1/2, or 50 percent, as the probability that at least 2 of 23 people will have a common birthday.''

Got that?

Using similar math, you can calculate that if you want even odds of finding two people born within one day of each other, you only need 14 people, and if you are looking for birthdays a week apart, the magic number is seven. (Incidentally, if you are looking for an even chance that someone in the room will have your exact birthday, you will need 253 people.) And yet despite numbers like these, we are constantly surprised when we meet a stranger with whom we share a birth date or a hometown or a middle name. We are amazed by the overlap -- and we conveniently ignore the countless things we do not have in common. "