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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>A long time ago, a computer science professor was teaching us about random number generators. He asked us to write down ten random numbers, ten digits each. Then we did randomness tests on them. One of the findings I vaguely recalled from a long time ago is that when you write down ten random digits (such as a social security number) the probability of a human-chosen random number has anomalously few repeated digits. Does that sound right, randomness hipsters? The human-chosen ten-digit numbers are more likely to have nearly all ten single digit numbers.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Reason I ask: the USA is likely going to grant pardon for all illegal immigrants who have used a random social security number (ten digits.) The victims of that blanket pardon are those whose SS numbers have been randomly chosen and used by an illegal. A cheerful thought occurred to me: those of us whose SS numbers contain a lot of repeats are less likely to have had our number stolen.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Sound right?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>