Life advice and luck

EAT HEALTHY, DO SPORTS AND SEIZE THE DAY!!

I'm just kidding ;) I don't want to give any advice for your life. Everyone should do what they want as long as it doesn't harm others.

I am a 24 year-old Math and Economics student at University of Dortmund, Germany and I really don't know what to write. So I just wanted to say „Thank you“. First of all thank you to The Listserve and its members for this interesting project. I love to read about other peoples lifes and stories in such an authentic way. I am also very thankful for my life. I don't believe in God but I think you can be thankful anyway. I am lucky to have loving family and friends that are healthy and love me for who I am. For me, the most important thing ist to know that you're being loved by someone.

After an unhealthy relationship and one year of being single I found the perfect girl last summer. We met at a party and made out quite quickly (there was alcohol). Two days later we met again and discovered how many things we have in common. From that day on, we saw each other every day and really fell in love. I often think about how unlikely it was for exactly the two of us to meet at that party, kiss and later discover all these similarities. She thinks it was fate but I am more the coincidence-type.

Speaking of coincidence... When I was notified that i had won The Listserve lottery I felt very lucky at first. But then I was wondering if I really was lucky or if the time period i am subscribed to The Listserve was just long enough for this to be likely to happen. Because I am only subscribed for a few months now, I know there was much luck going on, but I was interested in the probabilities anyway. So I worked out a formula where you can calculate the probability of winning in a time period of your choice. Here are some results:

The probabilty you win

-tomorrow: 0.004%
-within the next month: 0.13%
-within the next year: 1.32%
-within the next 10000 days: 10.08%

Assumptions: The growth rate continues to be 25 subscribers per day and you can't win twice (otherwise the probabilities would be a little bit lower).

So I indeed was very lucky to win The Listserve lottery.

I'll be on vacation in Thailand and Cambodia in Feburary and if you know anything exciting/interesting to see/do there besides the main tourist stuff (Bangkok, Angkor Wat) I'd be happy to hear it :). Also my girlfriend and I want to take a short trip within Europe for New Year's and we don't know where to go yet. It could be something crowded and exciting or something quiet and romantic. Feel free to send me suggestions or anything else you want to say.

I wish you all the best!

Justus
justusschneider[AT]yahoo.de
Dortmund, Germany

P.S. The formula I used (I'm sorry if I made any major mistakes):
sum from i=1 to n over: [ 100/(23432 – i + 25*i) ]
n: number of days you want to look ahead
i: counting variable
23432: people who didn't win yet (minus 1 winner a day, plus 25 new subscribers a day)

All the probabilities may be a bit higher because i didn't consider the case when someone doesn't write an E-Mail and someone new is chosen. A good approximation up to a year that is easier to calculate is:

(100*n) / (23432 + 24*n)

Comments

Post a Comment

Favorites

This is a puzzle.

Beyond this message a challenge awaits; In the listserve, no links are allowed, what a cruel fate! The first clue must be deciphered by ROT 8. . Let me know and just email if your brain needs a spark Your first clue is just after this punctuation mark / dsoqwj vwxwfvafy lge jgtafkgf af lg cadd s egucafytajv Listserve Puzzle listservepuzzle[AT]gmail.com
Read more

21,612 is a lot

Hi, everyone. I'm a teenaged girl. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know much about the world. I'm 18, a freshman in college, and I struggle every day trying to see into the future: into what might be, where I might go. Recently I've decided that my destiny in life is to be a high-school biology teacher, but ask me again later and perhaps that will have changed. One thing I feel passionate about is body modification. Somehow my standards of beauty have developed in a way that put piercings, tattoos, implants and scarification at the forefront. However, my parents have threatened to cut off their funding for my education if I modify myself in any way. I already have piercings, and though my family will never see them due to their private locations, I would love to be able to share this important part of my life with them and express myself through modification in a more public way. Essentially, they have rejected my lifestyle, and through this, they have
Read more

Tiny wings

Hi all, I want to write about a subject that is very close to my heart - bees! I started bee keeping last year, and have two colonies right now. These two already managed to supply my family and my friends with more than enough honey, and keeping the bees is a tremendously satisfying activity. They smell so good, and are very tidy animals, and are just very, very interesting overall. The insects' way of dealing with the world is just so very different from how we as mammals approach it - it seems almost alien. Anyways, what is probably most impressive is the workload these little animals deal with. For one kilo of honey, they visit 4 million flowers, and fly a distance equivalent of more than 4 times around the earth. Think about that for a second. And then, if you start to think about how they "furniture" their housing themselves by the wax they sweat out, how they can control temperature inside the hive to the tenth of a degree, how they collectively make decisions i
Read more