alt Hacker NewsIf you check on average every three years, the odds of you checking the very same day the book comes out are about 1‰, which is improbable but not _extremely_. Add that together with all the probabilities of things that would make you think "wow, that's improbable" and we have pretty high odds of something improbable happening.
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ButlerianJihad • last Friday at 6:41 AM
Okay, I squinted hard at that notation “1‰” and had Gemini explain it to me, and it appears that you made no typos, but I couldn’t let that go unexplained!
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In addition, there are factors that make it more probable.
- The sequel came out a bit less than 2 years after the first book, which is fairly typical. It means it is a likely time to think "what about the sequel?"
- Doctor appointments and book releases both tend to happen on tuesdays. Especially book releases, so it is possible that you tend to think more about books on tuesdays
- It is possible to think about the book more than once without realizing it, maybe even inquery about the sequel without realizing it, and because the result is negative and unimportant, it is easy to forget. It is not uncommon for me to search something just to find it in my history, completely forgotten
I would put the likelihood of something like that happening by accident to about 1/100, the "noticeable but not memorable" kind, such as meeting the same person twice in a day in a different context, or arriving at a highly coveted parking spot just as the previous guy is leaving.