

Two Girls, a Golden Balloon, and Fate - lalwanivikas
http://priceonomics.com/two-girls-a-golden-balloon-and-fate/

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evanjacobs
This reminds me of a story I heard as a kid while listening to a baseball game
on the radio.

During a game one night, one of the non-starting pitchers was bored in the
dugout and started doodling on the baseballs that would be periodically
brought out to the umpire (to replace balls that are hit out of play or that
are scuffed on the dirt). He happened to know that it was the home plate
umpire's birthday that day and so on one ball he wrote "Happy Birthday Dave"
(or whatever the umpire's name was). At one point, that ball was brought out
to the umpire by the bat boy along with a few other balls and was put into
play by the umpire who didn't notice the inscription.

The batter happened to hit that ball foul into the stands where it was caught
by a guy named Dave who was also celebrating his birthday that day.

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smoyer
I love hearing stories like this because it's amazing how many coincidences
can occur (especially when we look for them). As the article almost points out
(in reference to human nature), we're totally in the dark about all the things
that make the girls different.

I also think commonalities can be asymmetric ... they both hate pork rinds and
love candy is markedly more likely than they both hate candy and love pork
rinds.

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jisaacks
This was a story on radiolab titled stochasticity:
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/91684-stochasticity/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91684-stochasticity/)

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wikwocket
What a fun story. I can see what the mathematician is saying, that with
billions of "events" happening all the time, supremely improbable events like
this are bound to happen periodically. And we only notice the ones that strike
our fancy.

But it still makes for a fun read, and in the end it brought together two
families and forged new friendships.

~~~
jcl
Yeah... It reminds me of a Feynman quote:

"You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here,
on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you
won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can
you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the
chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!"

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runamok
Just confirmation bias at work. I am sure there are many things they did not
have in common that they choose to ignore. Humans are pattern recognition
machines which in truth is a lot of fun.

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indrax
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewood%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewood%27s_law)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)

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lingoberry
A little bit more likely than it first would seem. The balloon didn't land on
Laura Buxton, but on a farmer who knew someone named Laura Buxton, which
depending on how common that name is and how many people the farmer knew is
not extremely unlikely. After the girls met they were already primed for
looking for resemblances because of the identical name. All in all, it's a
very unlikely event but not as unlikely as you might think.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Plus, many similar meetups have occurred between people who didn't share
similarities, but we don't hear about those because they're unremarkable.
There are many motivations for believing events such as this are more than
just a coincidence. It's also very difficult to comprehend the sheer number of
human beings living on this planet when each of us has relationships with such
a minuscule percentage of them.

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mcv
I wonder if you could calculate just how unlikely this event is. Then multiply
by the world's population and a few decades, and count how many similarly
unlikely events happened. Do you get a big mismatch or not?

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ender89
Clearly there's a glitch in the matrix.

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ourmandave
Oh sure, the mathematicians might be able to hand wave away this one with
their "trillions of events".

But what about that time where thousands of men were all named Spartacus?

Yeah, ponder that one over a really hot cup of tea.

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shkkmo
Douglas Adams already covered this:

One in a Million chances happen 9 times out of 10.

~~~
portman
The quote is actually Terry Pratchet, not Douglas Adams.

“Million-to-one chances,” she said, “crop up nine times out of ten.”

[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Discworld](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Discworld)

~~~
shkkmo
Huh, I've misattributed that quote in my head for quite a while then. Thanks
for straightening me out.

