Find your birthday in Pi!
This database of the digits that form the magic number Pi are searchable on this webpage. Punch in any number, such as your birthday, and you'll find out where it is in Pi; it seaches the first 100 million, yes 100,000,000 digits after the decimal point.
My birthday, 7-26-53 occurs at position 18,960. My zip code is at 65,042. My social security number isn't in there at all (though the last 8 digits are). My phone number (without area code) is at position 13,467,876 (my phone number with area code isn't there at all). 9/11/01 is found at position 8268 -- coincidence? Yes.
It's interesting to see the changes of any sequence of digits at http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery#likely. That long partial social security number, surprisingly, has a 63% chance of being there. That 91101string, like any 5 digit string has a 100% chance of being found (11111 is at 32788; is at 65260 -- just under twice as far out as 11111; 33333 is at 28647).
The point is that with any large sampling of numbers -- or anything, for that matter -- patterns are going to be easy to find. That's why the New York Lottery turning up 911 on September 11 isn't that big a deal. An event that happens to one in a billion people a day happens 2,000 times a year!
[Links and some points from the Skeptic Mag newsletter.]
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