OT: For spotters of unusual odometer readings...

[The Medway Handyman]

My Kangoo van is NA03 LHD. I were having a bacon roll at a local burger van & a lorry driver told me he had a Renault reg NA02 LHD.

But as I said, statistically it isn't unlikely.

[tony sayer]

Any on ng Statisticians around, probability of that happening please!?...

[David Hearn]

So, how's Debs getting on with her new baby boy? And did Yell give you the right number for Persimmon Homes? ;)

Oh, and hope you have a nice time with Rich and Claire tomorrow.

It's amazing what information you can pick up from photos and URLs/Whois. ;)

D

[Kostas Kavoussanakis]

I think that's an understatement, given the way licence plate numbers are generated. Esp. if you take into consideration fleet cars and how the same company (eg car hire) registers a shedload of cars of the same spec more or less, at the same region, year after year after year.

Kostas

[Adrian]

Kostas Kavoussanakis ( [e-mail]) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

The chances of it happening with the current reg system are far lower than with the old system.

I'm assuming that UKD was a local letter combination around Liverpool - that'd massively increase the chances of three cars bearing similar plates "meeting".

For Medway Handyman, the chances are much more remote, as the only local part of the plate now is the first two characters - and NA is Newcastle- upon-Tyne LVLO, which isn't *quite* as far from Medway as it's possible to get, but close...

[judith]

Also - there are something like 10,000 people use these numbers every week; so if they did come up, the pay-out to individuals would be comparatively small

[judith]

I make it exactly 81.786%

[judith]

What - that he had NA02 LHD?

I would have thought that that was very unlikely !!

(I think you need to be a bit more precise on what was unlikely)

[Adrian]

judith ( [e-mail]) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

But would the truck driver have also commented if he'd had NB03LHD, NA04LHD, or any of a whole bunch of other "similar" registrations.

[John Rumm]

If you were going to play the lottery, then what you really need is to use the *least* popular set of numbers to maximise your chances of keeping the bulk of a big win.

[Arthur2]

The fleet car theory is fine but mine and the others cars were V reg which was about

9 or 10 years old at the time.

Arthur

[Arthur2]

Shush! 'Debs' might be Medway's fancy piece.

Arthur

[JT]

In message , Arthur2 writes

I was driving my, at the time, 10yo car H446 JRX, when I noticed H445 JRX passing, different model too.

[Al Reynolds]

It was this very fact that got me to think about it in the first place.

This one is an interesting one. Although 1,2,3,4,5,6 is as likely as any other combination, people tend to group unusual sets of lottery numbers into categories. This one would most likely fall into the "six consecutive numbers" category, but could fall in the "all single digits" category, or the "all numbers in order category". Now AFAICR the numbers have never come out of the machine in numerical order, which is probably because the "all numbers in order" outcome is quite unlikely (about 1/720). The "six consecutive numbers" outcome is even less likely than this even if you don't require them to be in the correct order (about 1/320,000).

If, however, you want them to be consecutive *and* in the correct order then we're talking in the region of 1/23,000,000. Now the specific outcome 1,2,3,4,5,6 has a probability of about 1/14,000,000 if they don't need to be in order, or 1/10,000,000,000 if they are to be in order.

This is why 1,2,3,4,5,6 is regarded as "more unlikely" even though it isn't more unlikely than any other combination of six numbers. It belongs to a category of result combiations which is statistically less likely than other categories of result combinations. It's all about perception.

I teach statistics, and I can confirm that you are correct.

Al

[Al Reynolds]

Fine and yes.

I'm looking forward to it.

Indeed. I did ceck the phone to make sure there was nothing too sensitive on it before I put it in the pic. Well read anyway!

Al

[Owain]

I was wondering exactly what the 'nice time' with Rich and Claire involved - swapping car-keys?

Owain

[Huge]

Probably.

:o)

[Roger]

The message from Adrian contains these words:

KD was a Liverpool registration in the old days so would have been local to that area later on.

I was driving my (2nd hand) Range Rover DVR 270T through Keighley some time in the early 80s when I noticed the RR in front was next in sequence. I had bought mine from a chap near Ferrybridge and VR was a Manchester registration so both were some way from their original homes.

[Lurch]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:37:18 +0100, Owain mused:

I did wonder what they were doing as I'm currently at Rich and Claires and I didn't think they were going to be at Al's this weekend.

[The Medway Handyman]

That we should meet in Rochester.