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what are the odds?
Jul. 19th, 2008 11:59 amI found a new place to live today. It's on the south end of Concord, and will cut at least 10 minutes off of my commute to work. It's half a duplex that's somewhere around 100 years old: wide pine board floors and horse-hair plaster walls. But it's two bedrooms with another finished room in the basement where I can put my weight bench (and actually go back to using it). The rooms are all odd sizes, none of the floors are completely level and it's got the steepest, deepest, narrowest stairs to the second floor that I've ever seen (and I've lived in and looked at my share of old houses). Making the turn at the top of the stairs with mattresses and box springs will be interesting. But it's big enough, so I can deal with it's "character".
This was the second place I looked at. I've made lots of calls, talked with a couple of people and left messages about wanting to see a few other places. When I got home last night with the newspaper, this was the first place I called about. In less than five minutes I knew this guy was a straight-shooter and that was just as important as anything else about the place. And he was not a disappointment in person. About half-way through the walk-through he told me there were two other people in front of me that had seen the place and he needed to follow-up on them. By the time we were done, he'd decided that he wanted to go with me, gave me an application and a lease. I'm going to have all that back to him tomorrow, he can call my references on Monday, and hopefully Monday or Tuesday night I can sign the lease and give him a check.
Now, it turns out he owns the service station that's just around the corner and down the street from where I live now. I'd actually done business with him about 10 years ago for a minor repair on my Ex's minivan. But the real double-take came when he was telling me about my neighbor. Where I live now, my neighbor is the secretary at the elementary school where my kids go. My new neighbor is an older woman who lives with her daughter who recently finished college and is now a teacher. At my kids' elementary school.
There are two classes each of grades K-5 at the school, plus a music teacher and a librarian, which makes 14 teachers, and not all of them live in town. Concord is a city of about 42,000. I don't still have the paper, but there were somewhere between 50 and 100 ads for rooms, apartments, duplexes, condos, and houses for rent in Concord. Some of them were for apartment buildings and complexes with multiple places for rent so let's say 100 places for rent in town were available this past Friday. Assuming each place has 8 neighbors (ignoring houses on corners and cul-de-sacs with fewer, and apartments in single-entry building with more), that's 800 opportunities to have 1 of 14 teachers for an immediate next-door or across the street neighbor (also assuming an equal distribution of both where the teachers live and where the rentals are). The 2000 census reported 16,281 households in Concord, which makes those 800 opportunities 5% of that. Finally, with 14 teachers, that's 1.75% of the 5%, or a .000875% chance of this happening.
So. Who wants to correct my math?
This was the second place I looked at. I've made lots of calls, talked with a couple of people and left messages about wanting to see a few other places. When I got home last night with the newspaper, this was the first place I called about. In less than five minutes I knew this guy was a straight-shooter and that was just as important as anything else about the place. And he was not a disappointment in person. About half-way through the walk-through he told me there were two other people in front of me that had seen the place and he needed to follow-up on them. By the time we were done, he'd decided that he wanted to go with me, gave me an application and a lease. I'm going to have all that back to him tomorrow, he can call my references on Monday, and hopefully Monday or Tuesday night I can sign the lease and give him a check.
Now, it turns out he owns the service station that's just around the corner and down the street from where I live now. I'd actually done business with him about 10 years ago for a minor repair on my Ex's minivan. But the real double-take came when he was telling me about my neighbor. Where I live now, my neighbor is the secretary at the elementary school where my kids go. My new neighbor is an older woman who lives with her daughter who recently finished college and is now a teacher. At my kids' elementary school.
There are two classes each of grades K-5 at the school, plus a music teacher and a librarian, which makes 14 teachers, and not all of them live in town. Concord is a city of about 42,000. I don't still have the paper, but there were somewhere between 50 and 100 ads for rooms, apartments, duplexes, condos, and houses for rent in Concord. Some of them were for apartment buildings and complexes with multiple places for rent so let's say 100 places for rent in town were available this past Friday. Assuming each place has 8 neighbors (ignoring houses on corners and cul-de-sacs with fewer, and apartments in single-entry building with more), that's 800 opportunities to have 1 of 14 teachers for an immediate next-door or across the street neighbor (also assuming an equal distribution of both where the teachers live and where the rentals are). The 2000 census reported 16,281 households in Concord, which makes those 800 opportunities 5% of that. Finally, with 14 teachers, that's 1.75% of the 5%, or a .000875% chance of this happening.
So. Who wants to correct my math?
