I’m aware it has been quite some time since I’ve last posted anything here. I could tell you all about how I’ve been busting my ass to get the book done, or how I’ve been trying to keep up with classes and whatnot. But am I going to to? Hell no! I’m just going to forge on as if nothing had happened, and there had been no break at all.
So, in an odd turn of events, last night I met two people in my Japanese class who actually read Real Life, Sarah and Jennifer (I think. I’m horrible with names). The fact that I even met one person alone astounded me, because I’ve only ever really been recognized out of context once or twice at a ren faire, and it’s always fairly disorienting. But see, in the course of a few weeks I’ve not only met those two, but two OTHER people in the class who read Real Life, one of whom I actually met at comic-con this year. The odds of that alone are astounding, but I’m not going to get into that. This completely takes me off guard, and I decided to sit down and think about exactly how probable it would be that such a thing would occur. This required complex math, which I’m sure I got wrong, as I’m not exactly the best with math. Nor do I really care to learn more. There are entire classes centered around statistics and probability, and I hope to stay far far away from them. But here is what my primitive monkey brain managed to figure out.
Real Life has, on the whole, an average of 45,000 readers per day. I don’t usually share this information, but hell with it. That’s probably not a realistic number, as it’s based solely on IP addresses, and colleges will oftentimes count as one IP address, stuff like that. Problem is, I have no way to translate it into a more realistic number, so we’ll stick with it for the purposes of this demonstration. Now, according to my stats, 70% of my readers hail from the United States. That’s a whopping 31,500 of you. ( enough for a convention, I might add) Now we put it into perspective. The United States currently has a population of 292,666,883 people, and California is home to 35,116, 033 of them, or about 12% of the total. We got lots of people here. According to the census, 14% of those are aged 15-24. Pay attention to that number, it’ll come in handy. It’s what people in the waste treatment field call a *finger quotes* Demographic *finger quotes*. Now, using that percentage, that would mean 3,780 of you guys live here in California. Not bad. Now we get smaller. The Greater Sacramento Area (or as I like to call it, “HELL HOLE”) has 2,027,600 people in it, which is 6% of all of CA. Based on that number alone, I would say Sacramento has 218 readers, but Cliff pointed out to me that due to the fact that the Sacramento Bee did a bit about Real Life and stuff like that, Sacramento might have a higher percentage of readers than other places. Let’s say twice that. So, 436 readers here in Sac, then. Here’s where it gets convoluted.
American River College claims to have around 30,000 students enrolled, 53% of which are under the age of 25. Let’s call them our 18-24 crowd. :) That would mean 15, 900 students are in that key demographic. I pay attention to that demographic because around 70% of you guys are in it. So, 70% of the Sacramento Readers would be 306 readers. According to my numbers, about 6% of all of Sacramento’s 15-24 people attend American River College. 6% of the 306 15-24 Readers would be 17 readers. Statistically speaking, that means there are 17 of you attending ARC with me. Let’s get smaller now. My Japanese class has about 50 students, give or take. That’s 50 people out of 30,000, or 0.17%. By those numbers, there is an average of 0.03 Real Life readers per classroom. :) That means there is a 3% chance that there would be even one RL reader in my class with me. The chance of having FOUR of them is about 1%. I’m sure there’s more complex ways of figuring these things out that would be more accurate, but still, them’s some mighty unlikely odds. If you have better math for me, please drop me a line. I’m curious to see where I flubbed it. :D
On a completely different note, one of my readers sent me a screencapture from Stargate SG-1 that I think pretty much speaks for itself:
Undeniable proof that someone in the wardrobe department at Stargate SG-1 reads Real Life, or AMAZING COINCIDENCE? You be the judge. Wait, no. I’ll be the judge. And I say it’s the proof thing, not that other one.