In order to take a break from thinking about packing (the actual packing is proceeding very slowly) I went with my Mom, Dad, and master's swim coach to an open water swim/race. While talking to a group of people, it came up that I wasn't going to be around next weekend. One of the women in the circle eventually dragged out of me that I would be attending Budapest Semesters in Mathematics. Surprisingly enough, her daughter is also going.
Around 60 or so other students are attending BSM this semester, they come from all over the country.
So, what are the chances that the parents of one of the other students would be at the same open water swim as me, in upstate New York?
Assuming random distributions and about 100 million households, the chance of a single encounter resulting in a household with another BSM student is 59/100,000,000, or 0.0000059. However, there were 80 swimmers at that meet, so 80 X 0.0000059 is 0.000472. Realistically, swimmers are smarter than other sports people, so the chances of finding another math major family at a swim meet is much higher than at a cage fighting event. A reasonable estimate is that the distribution is 10 times higher at a swim meet, so rounding up a little and multiplying by 10 yields a probability of 0.005. We're getting into the realm of unusual but not like being struck by lightening or winning the lottery. Have a great time, Jeff!
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