Statistical Anomalies

jeepinmatt

jeepinmatt

#1 WEBWHEELER
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Joined
Mar 24, 2005
Location
Stanley, NC
Ever have some random thing occur and think to yourself "that seems like a rare thing"?

Driving in to work, I saw blue lights 3 times, and not for me, haha! The weird thing is, I saw the actual moment where the blue lights began their encounter 3 times. All within 15 minutes, at 3 separate locations. 1st was an old lady getting pulled over in Lowell. Second was an i85 fender bender in Belmont where the LEO hit lights and rolled up right as I was passing by. Third was CMPD hitting lights and pulling someone over as I went by on 74 between Belmont and i485.

Another weird thing is that I was behind a state trooper for the first 2 incidents.
 
I was just thinking about coincidences the other day (and still looking for a third occurrance).

Last week, I saw a 70s cab over tow truck here in town. You just dont see them on the road that often anymore.

An hour later, I was headed to Aberdeen, and passed another one going down US1. That one had PA plates.

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kaiser715 said:
I was just thinking about coincidences the other day (and still looking for a third occurrance).

Last week, I saw a 70s cab over tow truck here in town. You just dont see them on the road that often anymore.

An hour later, I was headed to Aberdeen, and passed another one going down US1. That one had PA plates.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
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Yep, you must have missed the 3rd one!
 
jeepinmatt said:
Ever have some random thing occur and think to yourself "that seems like a rare thing"?

Driving in to work, I saw blue lights 3 times, and not for me, haha! The weird thing is, I saw the actual moment where the blue lights began their encounter 3 times. All within 15 minutes, at 3 separate locations. 1st was an old lady getting pulled over in Lowell. Second was an i85 fender bender in Belmont where the LEO hit lights and rolled up right as I was passing by. Third was CMPD hitting lights and pulling someone over as I went by on 74 between Belmont and i485.

Another weird thing is that I was behind a state trooper for the first 2 incidents.
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Ever notice blue lights are more prevelant on the last few days of a month and even more so on the last few days of a quarter?
But police dont have quotas
 
grapehead said:
Some people get to win the lottery, you got to see blue lights 3x in one morning. Enjoy your luck! :beer:
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Im used to seeing them in the rearview, not as a passerby! :D
 
braxton357 said:
Congrats Matt.
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haters-gonna-hate-7876932.png
 
Not really a coincidence, but I’ve always heard “there’s gators in the river” where I live. Never seen em. Driving over the bridge on I20 yesterday, I looked down and finally saw a big ass dinosaur soaking in the sunshine on a log. No more tubing down the river for me.
 
Wateree?
Near the highway 1 bridge?
 
Gotcha.
We put in on Hwy 1 and run up chasing stripers...was hoping to head that way tonight but daughter's softball game will prevent that.
 
Maybe not so much statiscal anomalies...but quite frequently I think about how 5-15 seconds could change an outcome...leave 15 seconds earlier or later, maybe that accident/ticket wouldn’t have happened. At work, make a call 2 hours too late on an item where there’s a shortage, you don’t get it. Limited release bourbon at the ABC store, show up 15 minutes late you don’t get it. See a good deal on a house or car and call on it at lunch the next day, you might be too late. Then my mind wanders with the plot of the final destination movies.
 
Ron said:
Gotcha.
We put in on Hwy 1 and run up chasing stripers...was hoping to head that way tonight but daughter's softball game will prevent that.
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Let me know one day. Be glad to meet y’all and just say hello. I live less than 10 minutes from the 1 bridge.
 
My parents and my brother are all down for the Cup this weekend. Mom's family is all buried in the Quaker cemetery.
 
Wes said:
Let me know one day. Be glad to meet y’all and just say hello. I live less than 10 minutes from the 1 bridge.
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You better bring a pole and get your butt in the boat!
 
kaiser715 said:
I was just thinking about coincidences the other day (and still looking for a third occurrance).

Last week, I saw a 70s cab over tow truck here in town. You just dont see them on the road that often anymore.

An hour later, I was headed to Aberdeen, and passed another one going down US1. That one had PA plates.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Probably heading to the show in Kentucky. That's where my brother is at this weekend, a truck show for just big rig trucks. He says there is some crazy tricked out stuff there.
 
Ron said:
Ever notice blue lights are more prevelant on the last few days of a month and even more so on the last few days of a quarter?
But police dont have quotas
Click to expand...
A good friend is an Inspector for the State HP.
He was telling me last night, every 30 days... which would mean about the end of the month... the whole state HP goes out on dragnet at the same time to recover plates from people's cars - at their homes - if they have a long-overdue repair order.
 
Silverado_Express said:
Probably heading to the show in Kentucky. That's where my brother is at this weekend, a truck show for just big rig trucks. He says there is some crazy tricked out stuff there.
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lol coincidence solved!

The thing is, your brain is literally wired to always be looking for connections between events, trying to find correlations and relationships between things. This is part of what makes us better than machines. And sometimes, worse. Sometimes shit is just random or unrelated and you automatically associate it together because of temporal proximity.
In fact, people generally hate patterns that are truly random b/c they often don't look "evenly random". If you flip a coin 10 times, the chances of getting 1111100000 are just the same a 1101010001, yet when that first one happens people get all freaked out and start assuming things.
This is a common problem for behavioral/neuroscience researchers, who do experiments where people might be presented with different kinds of stimuli n a random order (to, say, look at differences in responses to different things)... if the person sees the same thing too many times in a row, they start changing the way they think about it or their expectations for what will happen next. I've seen this all the time, where we had to make things not-so-random just to keep people from biasing their answers. In statistical terms... people think "random" means a nice even Gaussian distribution, when in actuality it should be a uniform distribution.
 
Close friend of mine was probably less than a minute behind the innocent girl that died as a result of thugs and crossfire in Charlotte yesterday. We’re long away from there now and she’s doing a great job of drinking the thought of what could’ve been away.
 
I had a young girl in a hellfire hurry pass me in a curve, on a bridge, and almost ran in to oncoming traffic. The second in line coming towards me was an NC State Trooper....score! First time I've ever gotten to witness instant karma in the form of a trooper pulling someone over. They were on the side of the road before I ever got within sight of them.

I've been in a great mood all afternoon because of that!
 
Croatan_Kid said:
I had a young girl in a hellfire hurry pass me in a curve, on a bridge, and almost ran in to oncoming traffic. The second in line coming towards me was an NC State Trooper....score! First time I've ever gotten to witness instant karma in the form of a trooper pulling someone over. They were on the side of the road before I ever got within sight of them.

I've been in a great mood all afternoon because of that!
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I feel the same way when somebody passes me doing 70 in the snow (I'm doing 45ish) and then only to see them standing in the median beside an upside down 4wd. :fuck-you:
 
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