Today I "/?op=randomnode"'d to my own node, twice. Inspired by this, I hit this node and here's what came out because of that:
u=number of your nodes
e=number of nodes in e2
n=number of your nodes in random nodes nodelet
l=number of nodes in random nodes nodelet (13)
p=propability to get that number of your nodes in the nodelet
(u/e)n*(1-u/e)(l-n)*l!
p = ------------------------
(l-n)!n!
Now, that's very helpful, isn't it? Let's test it. As of right now, there are 735207 nodes in E2, of which 451 have a writeup by me. Placing them in the above formula, we see that likelihood to see exactly q of my nodes in the random nodelet are as following:
[chart 1]
q | p
-------
1 | 0.007916
2 | 0.000029
3 | 0.0000000656148
4 | 0.000000000100687
5 | 0.000000000000111245
6 | 0.0000000000000000910444
7 | 0.0000000000000000000558839
8 | 0.00000000000000000000000257265
9 | 0.00000000000000000000000000877288
10 | 0.00000000000000000000000000000215395
11 | 0.00000000000000000000000000000000360577
12 | 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000368875
13 | 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000174169
-----------------------------------------------------
sum | 0.007945
Now, those are just numbers that really don't tell you much. But since the propabilities seem to be fairly linear (well, in logarithmic way...),
let's make a new propability measuring unit: rn, RandNodelet. 1 rn shall be propability to get one of your nodes in the nodelet, 6 rn for 6 of
your nodes and so on. Of course, this isn't accurate because the chart above isn't really logarithmic, only close, but it'll do.
Also, its value depends on person, so I'll use my own statistics here. Your Mileage May Vary; with 4000 writeups these figures are quite different -
13 rn with 4000 nodes would be about 10.3 rn on 450 nodes. Anyways, here are likelihoods for some events to happen you during one year, on my
rn-scale):
[chart 2]
- Getting into an elevator accident
- 2.7 rn
- Dying on a dog bite
- 3 rn
- Getting struck by a lightning
- 2 rn
- Getting hit by a stellar object
- 5.7 rn
- Getting killed along with the rest of mankind in a meteor strike
- 2.2 rn
- Getting killed
- 1.5 rn
- Winning approximately one million dollars in Finnish lottery by playing with one line every week
- 1.8 rn
Now, I can hear you thinking "geez, I'm dead already, I saw once two and one fifth of my nodes in the random nodes nodelet, and that's equals the
chances of meteor strike. ACK, wait, that means we're all dead already!". Well, sorry to tell you this, but you're not going to die... yet.
Those are likelihoods for something to happen once a year. You check random nodelets out more than once a year, don't you? Now, I checked my Navigator
history for visits on pages at everything2.com. There were 677 in the range of 21 days, which makes approximately 32 visits/day. Now, each of these
visits (well, excluding XML ticker visits, but they were few) generated a new random nodelet. Here's a chart for likelihoods that during these three weeks,
at least once I had a number of my nodes (or more) in the nodelet:
[chart 3]
n | p
-------
1+ | 0.995486
2+ | 0.019588
3+ | 0.000044
4+ | 0.0000000682416
5+ | 0.0000000007447
[at which time my TI-89 ran out of horsepower...]
- 5->s:1-(1-sum(randlet(13,seq(x,x,s,13),735207,451.)))677
- 7.447E-11.
- 6->s:1-(1-sum(randlet(13,seq(x,x,s,13),735207,451.)))677
- 0.
As you can see, there isn't too much to worry yet; even three weeks of random-node-letting, which corresponds to 677 years of life on the events on
chart 2, gave me only one-to-22727 chances of dying on a dog bite!
Conclusion: I had a point I forgot it already. But isn't mathematics wonderful? ;)
Sources: My brains, TI-89, Tiede 2000 (and through it, Discover 5/96 and Tilastotälli 1997), www.veikkaus.fi