Odds and Probabilities Question.

atpbx

atpbx

atpbx

Soldato
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
21,454
On Saturday I had a random contact request pop up on my BB app on my work phone.

Now discounting the sensible answer that someone got the details from someone I knew and therefore it was entirely intended what are the odds of someone entering my BBM pin at random?

The BBM pin is made up a 8 digit alphanumeric pass key.

So the questions:

Say there are 50 million Blackberrys in the world, what would be the odds for someone entering a random pin and actualy getting anybody at all?

And what is the probability that the person they would get is me?
 
36 different options 8 times.

36^8

1 in 2821109907456. The chance they get your PIN.

Chance of getting any blackberry owners PIN (assuming they are all unique)

50 million in 2821109907456

Probably got something wrong. So wait for other peoples answers.
 
The above looks pretty right, may have slightly misinterpreted the question...

What you're really looking at is the odds of someone getting a code that's right if they guess.

So that'd be 28211.... / 50,000,000

So about 1 in 56422.2 of a random person typing in a number and it being a valid code. The probability of it being you is still the 1 in 2821109907456.

The only reason it would become 50m in 2821109907456 would be if there were 50m people attempting to put in your code. Rather than the one random person which I think you're going with?

So long as case doesn't have any impact. If case did have an impact it would be:

1 in 62^8, rather than 36^8

More likely is someone just got one digit out from somebody else, as the chances are blackberry use a progressive counting system rather than a completely random one.

kd
 
Oh yes I know it has an entirely rational and easy solution, someone has got a digit wrong, I was just interested to know how many possible codes their could be, the likely hood of entering a random one of the codes and getting a hit, and the likely hood of that hit being me, if as Ive said all codes where random for the phones.
:)
 
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