A reply from uuave

This is a follow-up post to the previous post.

As you yell, you get answered.
—(Terrible) Swedish proverb

I got a reply back from the gang at uuave a few hours ago. Judging from

• the brevity
• the lack of capitalization
• the last sentence

this wasn’t the first email they replied to tonight. If only they could find the perfect person to answer every email, one who thought and felt just like the person who wrote it. A soulmate, maybe. Then those poor creators could get some sleep.

Here’s the reply:

thanks rikard, i have amended the wording on the about page. also yeah we have some matches already they’re showing now. none of them are verified so we weren’t showing them but i am getting tired of getting emails like this so i updated the count

Yay!

EDIT: Alas, my work is not done

Don’t yell “Hello!” too soon.
—What the hell is the problem with Sweidsh proverbs?

So, as they said, they amended the wording on the page. It now says

According to the laws of probability [Ed note: FUUUCK!], for the 8^8 to provide a match every time someone takes the test, at least 16,777,216 people need to have taken the test.

That is … not true. For example, every question could have only one intelligent answer and the rest just slapping palms against the keyboard or be about baby killing or something. Then every person who took the test would probably get a match. Even given a random distribution, it is possible (however very unlikely) for every single person to get matched every time, except of course the first person to take the test.

This is not as wrong, I guess, it’s just that you can really feel that they have gotten something wrong. It seems like theyre going for the Pigeonhole Principle, which in this case would state: “If 16,777,216 people take the test, there is guaranteed to be at least one match.”

Like I said in my second email, the Coupon collector’s problem states that it will take, on average, 288,781,992 before every possible combination of answers has been given. Only then will every test result in a new match. Of course, right before then every 16,777,215/16,777,216 will result in a match, so you could draw the line somewhere. And 288,781,992 is a number that is a lot bigger than theirs, which won’t drive as much shares and clicks.

The more optimistic take, would, once again be that after 11,629,079 people take the test, every other person, 50%, will get a match immediately.

Again, here are the calculations in Wolfram:

• Average time it takes for every combination of answers to have been given at least once.
• Average time until half of the combinations of answers have been given at least once.

I sent a very brief reply back. Let’s see what happens this time.