[ExI] repeated digits in ss numbers

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Fri Nov 21 23:38:56 UTC 2014


An oddity:  when subjects are shown series of random numbers they don't
think that they are random.  bill w

On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 8:40 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> spike <spike66 at att.net> , 21/11/2014 2:39 AM:
>
>   Does that sound right, randomness hipsters?  The human-chosen ten-digit
> numbers are more likely to have nearly all ten single digit numbers.
>
>
> Yep:
> http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0041531
>
> There are a billion possible SSNs but 450 million have been used. So if I
> randomly select one number I have about 45% chance of hitting a number
> officially in use; whether it is actively used by somebody I guess is about
> 50-50. The internal structure of the used ones seem to be random with the
> exception of a few small 'holes'. So I think it is true that if you have a
> pattern-looking SSN it is less likely to have been used.
>
>
> Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford
> University
>
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