BS: What are the chances of ...

Subject: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: HuwG
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 07:49 PM

Last Thursday was my forty-thirteenth birthday, in case any 'Catter didn't know.

Late in March this year, I started a new job in IT. I am a combined software developer and Technical Support helpdesk person, which means that as soon as software deadlines are fixed, a server will crash, four people will forget their passwords and some drama queen of either sex will accidentally delete their emails.

There are perhaps fifty people working on the site, not a huge cross-section of the popularion. On Monday last week, I was asked to sign two birthday cards. I thought it was a coincidence that three people had birthdays in the same week. I was startled to find that it was actually three people had birthdays on the same day.

Given that December is not a popular month in which to be born, would anybody care to calculate the odds?

I think that next year, one of the other two people sharing my birthday will burst into my office waving a bloodied samurai sword and intoning "There can be only one!"

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 10:01 PM

And as you pull out the .44 Magnum you reply, "That's right. Only one."

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 10:49 PM

From Wikipedia - Birthday problem - as a sw developer, you should perhaps study this one... :-)

In probability theory, the birthday problem, or birthday paradox[1] pertains to the probability that in a set of randomly chosen people some pair of them will have the same birthday. By the pigeonhole principle, the probability reaches 100% when the number of people reaches 367 (including February 29 births). But perhaps counter-intuitively, 99% probability is reached with just 57 people, and 50% probability with 23 people. These conclusions are based on the assumption that each day of the year (except February 29) is equally probable for a birthday.

The mathematics behind this problem led to a well-known cryptographic attack called the birthday attack.

~~~~~~~~~~

The probablity of the case of 3 people is left as an exercise for the real student, as my Professors used to say with a wry smile...

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 12:45 AM

An adult night class I took about 35 years had the student desks arranged in three rows of ten facing each other. On the side of the room I was seated on there were six of us who had our birthdays on consecutive days of the month, and we were seated in almost the same order from left to right, although in different rows. I often since have marveled at the coincidence of both the dates and the seating order of that group.

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 06:48 AM

My best friend was born on 7/7/52. I was born on the same day three years later. We met in 1977 (of course)! On November 10, 1988, his first child, a daughter, was born. On November 10, 1995, seven years to the day, my daughter Merle was born. If you read it in a book, you would groan "Rubbish!"

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 08:22 AM

Two Words:

Serendipitous Coincidence.

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: fat B****rd
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 04:59 PM

Any'ow, a belated Happy Birthday.

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: HuwG
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 05:48 PM

Incidentally, folk music has got me into some minor trouble in the new job. The software concerns documenting and tracking import shipments. To test a new feature I had just written, I used the on-line form to add a record to the test database:

Quantity: one million
Unit(s): bags
Description: best Sligo rags

A development manager in Essex who found that this record upset the acounting totals for the whole database (as "bag" wasn't recognised as a valid package type), and whose cultural background didn't include the Dubliners and the Pogues, didn't see the funny side.

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 05:57 PM

Is "barrel" recognized? How about "bales"?

Subject: RE: BS: What are the chances of ...
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 06:25 PM

Happy Birthday!

Actually your 'development system' fails big time!

If it even ALLOWS you to enter an invalid package type direct by a user, instead of only accepting previously set up 'approved entry types', then it IS 'cheap and nasty' and will give endless costly problems ... (Technical Reason: insufficient entry validation!)

:-)

Speaking from bitter experience, normal users will do stunts like that all the time, including spelling an 'official' package name wrong!

Now it just depends on whether you just want a temporary wage, or you think you are working for a company that you want to stay with long term .... me, I'd not be running away immediately, but be looking what else is out there...

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt to prove it ...

With no sense of humor, that's not a good sign, anyway ... :-) Such a 'Manger' who considers that revelation of a major flaw does not merit commendation of the programmer, will produce a system like that of the infamous Qld Health Dept Staff Pay System - cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and months after implementation, is still not paying some people their wages at all, and most of them incorrectly - not making this up - read the news... :-)