I was reading Here Comes Everybody this morning in the small grocery tucked under Puget Sound Plaza and I hit a passage about the Birthday Paradox. I’m slightly familiar with it, due to my wanderings in security circles and the Birthday Attack, but I guess I never really thought about it.
The birthday problem asks whether any of the people in a given group has a birthday matching any of the others — not one in particular.
The part that surprises people is that they fail to take account for the exponential factor, wherein if you have three people in a room, there are three possible combinations. Yet, with twenty three people in a room, there are two hundred and fifty three pairs, which presents a fifty percent chances that two people in the room will have the same birthday.
Something clicked when I read about the birthday problem this time. First, I’m always laughing with friends about how we tend to know the same people. This would be expected in small social circles, or even larger scenes like bikes, but when I know someone through say, online dating or computer security, but a bike friend knows them through coops, it continues to feel odd. Yet, extending this same logic, the likelihood that in all the people we both know that we’d have some overlap, even in a city of over 600,000 people, doesn’t seem all that small.
Similarly, I’m a fan of C. Northcote Parkinson, coiner of Parkinson’s Law and Parkinson’s Law of Triviality, the former being “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” and the latter being too long to quote here. As a tech dork, the latter is expected, and we sometimes call it the “[color of the] bike shed problem.” However, the book is worth a read if you’re at all interested in meetings and committed; why and when they suck. In any case, while this has been presented to me many times, it finally clicked today that the difficulty in getting large groups to agree is the number of pairs of individuals that you have to get to agree or compromise. The math behind this is certainly a bit different than the birthday problem, and I recall seeing it laid out in Parkinson’s book. Yet, this realization made it all more clear without having to go back to college for the math background.
Yesterday Eric and I went down to the lobby Starbucks for an afternoon coffee and while returning we shared the elevator with a rather anxious girl. We were bullshitting about one thing or another and she interrupted and apologized, asking if we’d mind riding up to her floor with her. As it turns out, she was there for a job interview, and had at some point in the past been stuck in an elevator before and had a bit of residual PTSD about elevators. Her underlying anxiety about the interview wasn’t so bad without the elevator as a trigger. She much better when she stepped off it. Of course, elevators are awkward for those who prefer to be doing something anyhow.
Speaking of Starbucks. I laughed the other day when I realized that Foursquare has a “Barista” badge that you earn by checking in at five Starbucks. I didn’t realize this because Starbucks are so commonplace in Seattle that we treat them like 7-11s. If you’re ever going to sit down at a coffee shop, you go to a decent one, of which we have no shortage. On the other hand, Starbucks just serves as a convenience.
This week, which seemed empty until recently, is filling out nicely. I’ve got two receptions/parties to go to tonight. First, New Edge New Blood, where the AIA Seattle is honoring ten groups for, well, something, including Alleycat Acres. Something to do with sustainable landscape I presume. Then I’ve got to find a place to call in to my ARC Comm Team meeting on my portable, and make it to a release party for my new company. Interestingly, my old company, which I leave on Friday, has a big meeting today about how we’re acquiring another company. I only know what the twitter knows about this.
Tomorrow I ditch a physical ARC Comm Team meeting to try to finish up the AA CD Shed, then dinner and a bicycle wrench party with a friend. Thursday I’ve got to run over to Ada’s Technical Books to scout out the venue for the upcoming Bikestravaganza on Saturday. Then ride back to Pioneer Square for a Chef Users Group meetup.
Tori and I joked about how Friday was open, until we remembered that it was Gia’s birthday, and Mom will be here for dinner as her old friend Candy will be flying into town for a week of vacation with her. Saturday is, of course, the aforementioned Bikestravaganza. Meh. And I’m still working this week too! Almost done. Alright, I have to write overdue real blog posts now.