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Im trying to figure out the odds of someone on hotmail having a typo and accidentally sending an email to me. In addition to that the odds of that person coming from a country i lived in before. The email went to my gmail account. The email was legit.
The population of the country 5,100,000.
Lets just say for example that gmail allows for 100 charactrrs max for an account.
Isnt this like hitting the lotto a million times in a row?
Interesting.......
==================================================
--I am the STIG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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No.
Most users have an email address that makes some sort of sense.
For example, if your email name is hotstuff001 there is every chance that there is a hotstuff002 out there and that is only one mis-typed key to accidently send you the ad on how to save 15% or more on your car insurance.
Plus the 100 characters is irrelevent as most users have probably between 5 and 10 characters in their address (just the name portion).
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My email address has periods in it too ( full stops ). The email was legit and came from a country on the otherside of the planet that has a population of 5 million in it and I use to live there... I dont know man....The person that sent it and I were having a laugh.
==================================================
--I am the STIG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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UBX wrote: My email address has periods in it too ( full stops )
Some email providers will alias the email automatically so full stops are optional. So, if you have the email a.b@c.com, you may also get emails for ab@c.com. I suspect they'd prevent somebody from creating the email ab@c.com though.
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AspDotNetDev wrote: Some email providers will alias the email automatically so full stops are optional
Gmail is one such service. If my email address were colin.mullikin, but someone happened to send something to c.o...li.n.......mull..ik.i...n, it would still get to me. 
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde
Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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Now I am worried, how did you know my two email addresses?
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I work in the shipping department of a company that sells male enhancement products.
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You are bad!...5!
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I wish to make a complaint about your products.
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They require photographic evidence of their product's deficiency in order to log a complaint.
Also, they have never logged a complaint.
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They haven't logged a complaint, they also refuse to return the photos I send.
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MehGerbil wrote:
I work in the shipping department of a company that sells male enhancement products. |
What, beards?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I was going to say the same thing... that's like trying to apply random variable statistics to a name a human came up with. The odds are very different.
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UBX wrote: Isnt this like hitting the lotto a million times in a row?
Only if they were hoping their typo would result in you getting the mail.
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This is about the occurrence of rare events. Rare events are very common, once you think about them correctly. Imagine this situation...
"I went on holiday to the South of France, I've never been before. I went to the local marketplace and met Bob from my local pub! What are the chances of me being on holiday for the first time in France and meeting Bob!"
Sounds incredible...but it's not. What you have to ask firstly is: What are the chances of me meeting somebody I know while on holiday? I may know 100 people and we might all go on holiday twice a year. So there are already 200 chances that I meet somebody who is on holiday. The number of opportunties that any two of us meet from this group of 100 is:
100! * 20 = 1800000000000000000000000000...+ 130 more "0"s
That's 18 with 158 "0"s after it.
So the possibility that one of those opportunities arises in the same place on the same day is extremely likely indeed.
What seems incredible is that it happened to you.
An easier number to digest is this one...How many people need to be in a room for there to be a 50% chance that two of them share the same birthday?
183 maybe?
no...23. You can use the same maths above to work it out.
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Work out how many character combinations could not be people's names and subtract it from your total.
It will probably turn out to be more unlikely that your name would not be hit.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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