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What are the odds ?
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What are the odds ?
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Harri
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What are the odds ?
«
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31/01/2021 13:16:22 »
I'm hopeless at mathematics and certainly cannot work out the odds of something occurring and reoccurring so I hope someone can help. It's not a life or death question I'm just curious.
I have a digital clock next to my bed and have woken up and looked at the time to find 3:33. Twice. I have also woken up to see 5.55 and 4.44. This might be a common occurrence for some but I thought it unusual and wondered what the odds were of waking and seeing 3 digits with the same number?
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Re: What are the odds ?
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31/01/2021 13:49:21 »
Whatever the first digit is, there's only 1 minute in each hour when the other two digits will be the same as it. (1:11 2:22 etc)
So the odds are (to a good approximation) 1 in 60 for any given glance at the clock. I'm sort of assuming that 12:12 would count too- or that you wouldn't be in bed that early :-).
So if you look at the clock a couple of times in the night, you would see the pattern of 3 digits about a dozen times a year.
It probably "feels" more common than that, because you remember the "interesting" times like 3:33 (and maybe 1:23 or 5:43) but forget the "boring" ones when it's 3:36 or whatever.
It's possible that you might also consider it "odd" to see the time as exactly on the hour- say 3:00
Or where the numbers form a sequence- like 1:23 or 6:54
So that's 4 minutes each hour- odds of 1 in 15.
Since you sleep every night, that could easily mean seeing a "peculiar" number twice a month.
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