I’m just interested to see how this is distributed. One would think it will be a uniform distribution, but it may be that it isn’t and if so then we have something exciting to investigate!
(I do have a couple of reasons it may not be, this isn’t a completely pointless post - Benford’s Law is one thing, another thing is companies reserving interesting numbers although maybe the 2nd-last digit isn’t the one to investigate there)
Dumbest pick-up line ever.
But, 3.
penultimate
I was going to make this on the third-last, but had a last minute change of mind.
Ah. So that’s what it is. I’ve been wondering.
No – obviously they’re going to be the first and fourth numbers after the area code, but even then I don’t know how you would interpret any unequal distribution (except for possibly more 1s and fewer 8s [to make “the,” perhaps]), because you can’t “reserve” a number. In any case the businesses that hold onto certain numbers for mnemonics are going to have pretty close to random words anyway. Even the traditional dial puts more of the less commonly used letters (in English) on the 7 and 9 buttons.
It may not be a pointless poll, but if we really want to talk about probability, it seems highly probably that you have a lot of free time on your hands.
When I got my phone I wanted a nice “easy to remember” number, like 069-0696969 or something. So I wandered around the shopping center looking for good numbers but they were expensive. A number with triple-5 or triple-9 would have set me back hundreds of dollars.
I mentioned this to the young lady selling me the phone; she said she had several personal numbers ( :rolleyes: ) and would sell me one of hers with a quadruple digit (including the penultimater I clicked for the poll) for $15 or so.
For several months I got strange calls from men who seemed disconcerted by my male voice. I still get lots of SMS’s advertising things appropriate for teenage girls. :smack:
And 8 polls later you have every Dopers phone number!
You can reserve a number in a lot of countries. Actually, you must be able to reserve numbers given the huge amounts of ones in America like 1-800-SEX-ZFUN (or whatever) where the numbers spell something.
And yes, plenty of time. Although - amazed it’s got to half eleven already!
Darn. I put the last digit (8). Second to last is 4.
That’s why they extended the toll-free numbering range with 888, 877, 866, and 855. 1-855-GET-LAID…
Um… is that “half past eleven” or “half past ten”? I’ve never figured out that usage–it’s never seen here in my area in Canada.
I have several numbers. I chose our main home landline: 4.
9 (home phone number)
So far, 2 is looking a bit left out with only 3 votes, half of the next most common numbers and a fourth of the most common (1), so not a very uniform distribution.
