I have a history of success celebrating my birthday on Friday 13th during years in which it is feasible, and so it was yesterday.
Even though the celebration was in Oxford, we actually had 4 Lloydies (and a 5th needed to cancel at the last minute), with class years ranging from 1996 to 2008. My non-Techer friends very kindly put up the our occasional conversation devolvement, and of course it's always interesting when my present meets up with some of my past.
We didn't do anything special. We basically just hung out, but that's all I wanted anyway.
Happy Birthday!
ReplyDeleteInteresting tidbit: over the last 4800 months, the 13th falls on Friday more often than on any other day of the week... by one.
Of course, simple math says that the expectation (pardon my non-rigor) of how many 13ths will be Fridays is 685.714; 688 were Fridays (but I didn't get the stat of what day of the week was 687).
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt seems that we're right on target. :)
As an addendum to the title of this entry, February 14th is meant for pouring through Ph.D. applications. So much for love. :)
Or in my case, V-Day is for continuing to collect data and debug software in the desperate scramble to complete my MS thesis...
ReplyDeleteMore Friday the 13th stats:
ReplyDeleteDriving on a Friday the 13th is slightly safer than on other Fridays. (At least in The Netherlands.)
On Friday April 13th, 2029, asteroid 2004 MN4 will swing past earth at a lower altitude than geosynchronous satellites (but well above things in low-orbit like the ISS). It's trajectory will obviously be greatly affected by the close pass, but we should be able to predict it subsequent trajectory as more data is collected in the next few years.
Ah, but is it causation or just correlation? :)
ReplyDeleteThere's the rub, as usual.
ReplyDeleteI loved that XKCD by the way, I thump on that point all the time (especially in socio-politico-economico conversations...).