Attendee paradox

Statistics is hard. (Statistics are hard?) Grammar is hard.

Medium asked us to write three stories a day about XOXO, to capture the feel of the event. Today is day two, which means I’m three stories behind. Must do better.

Last time I was at XOXO, I hardly spoke to anyone. Today I spoke to 24 people. I met an Australian who had eloped with her partner, as did my wife and I, and we discussed the various repercussions of that within our families; also, mint slices. I heard about an incredible, not-yet-real-but-really-should-be project involving Natural History and designers. I talked API protocols with indieweb publishers, heard about the dangers of opaqueness in philanthropy, and dove deep into domain names and SSL. Honestly, who has time to write, when there’s so much interesting stuff to learn?

To the burning question: With 24 connections made, what then of the bingo card? If you recall, the card has 25 randomly-selected attendees on it, and I am aiming to have at least said hello to all of them by the time the conference ends.

Of the 24 people I chatted with yesterday, none of them were on my card.

You may be thinking “Of course! 24 people is a tiny fraction of 1195, it’s very unlikely you’ll meet any of them”, but this ignores that each time I chat to someone, I have 25 chances for them to be my first person. I know this because an attendee pointed it out to me last night as we were discussing probabilities and funeral parlours.

In fact, if you do the math(s), it turns out that there is a 48% chance I should have met someone on my list yesterday. Even if, say, 5 of those 25 people aren’t even at XOXO, there is still a 40% chance. You could probably write a little Go script and confirm this, which I definitely did not do.

So, not supremely unlucky, just a standard calling of heads when it was tails. But how can you call it bad luck, when the 24 people I chatted with were so delightful?

I explained the card to about 10 people yesterday, and when each asked to see it, each person knew 1 or 2 people on my card. When I generated a card for them, they knew nobody on their card. What I’m saying is, I’ve unwittingly invented a perfect random number generator that determines who you are — probably through our shared hive mind — and matches people with perfect strangers. What I’m actually saying is: probability is confusing and counterintuitive.

Also confusing is how Dan Deacon managed to get 400 people, ostensibly adults, myself included, to run around a dog park to electronic music. Literally run around. And I literally mean literally. You could see the childlike wonder written on the faces of everyone in attendance, as they raced in concentric circles high-fiving each other, followed the leader to interpretive dance, formed a self-engorging snake tunnel of raised arms which collapsed and dashed through itself, and finally charged at each other like William Wallace and his warriors, only with high fives instead of swords.

I’m probably going to enjoy day two.