Image via Wikipedia
In my post yesterday, I introduced the subject of the Birthday Problem. Did you try to guess at the answers?
For those of you previously unfamiliar with the Birthday Problem, I suspect that your guesses, unless you took pencil to paper, were rather inaccurate. It is still surprising to me that you need only 23 randomly chosen people to have a greater than 50% chance that two people share a birthday. And at 47 people you are at 95%.
Why is this important? (excluding the pure profit producing potential by wagering with friends)
To me, the Birthday Problem illustrates the sometimes surprising results of probabilities. It’s a cliche that “statistics can lie.” This can be true. But there are also important conclusions that can be inferred from the judicious extrapolation of data. It just takes providing the proper tools and someone who knows what to do with them.
This is how I view MVaaS. What is the probability that mistakes discovered at one location are repeated at the other locations? What is the probability that corporate endorsed best practices are followed at all locations?
Would our guesses by any more accurate than they were for the Birthday Problem?
