0.1%
¶ by Rob FrieselVia 802 Online: You look familiar… MySpace!?
Normally this would be a relief because I hate people and don’t want to meet 99.9% them. But this is the second time I’ve seen someone from MySpace I actually wanted to meet but was baffled by what sort of etiquette might govern the situation and was nowhere near drunk enough to say “fuck etiquette”.
What I really latched onto was the “99.9%” part. I’m guilty of saying this too but for once I thought to myself: “Self, what does that mean?” So to put it into persepective…:
| Population Size (equivalent to) |
Your 0.1% is… |
| 2,000 (So… Your average high school or small college) |
2 people |
| 9,291 (a small-ish town… say: Barre, VT) |
9 people |
| 38,889 (a small city… say: Burlington, VT) |
39 people |
| 608,827 (a small state; i.e., Vermont) |
609 people |
| 295,734,134 (the United States) |
295,734 |
| 6,624,215,000 (Earth) |
6,624,215 |
So… I guess not knowing (or wanting to know) 99.9% of people in a given sample/population is healthy but it sort of depends on the scale. Only wanting to know 0.1% of your high school or college makes you a social outcast. But at the same time, that’s a reasonably healthy (if not busy!) social life in a town like Burlington. So (and this is me going on the record): I’m reasonably confident that I have no interest in meeting 99.9999% of all people.
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