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Old January 7th 21, 02:27 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london
Sam Wilson[_2_] Sam Wilson[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Mar 2020
Posts: 58
Default Thameslink returns to the Tube Map

NY wrote:
"Mike Humphrey" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 07 Jan 2021 10:13:59 +0000, Sam Wilson wrote:
Mike Humphrey wrote:
On Wed, 06 Jan 2021 09:31:21 +0000, Sam Wilson wrote:
On of the UoEd’s schools used to use login names based on initials but
they were at least 3 characters long. People without a middle name
got an “x” inserted, so S.... W.... (not me) was “sxw”. It looked
odd when you first saw one - “oh, I didn’t know Steve’s middle name
was Xavier...”

According to DVLA, my middle initial is "9". Yes, the number nine.
Driver numbers are based on your surname plus first and middle
initials, but if you don't have a middle name you get a "9" instead.

Does your driver number end x99xx, where x is a letter? I have two
middle names and thus three initials but my driver number ends with
ii9xx where ii are my first two initials and xx are apparently random
letters.


Yes - M99xx. There seems to be some disagreement over what the second 9
means but Wikipedia says that it is to distinguish otherwise-identical
numbers. It starts at 9 and then counts down if needed to avoid a
duplicate number. I guess it's only likely to happen if twins have the
same first initial, or an unlikely coincidence.


Not necessarily twins - anyone of the same gender, with the same name(s),
born on the same date. Does it provide enough disambiguation to cope with
common names (the stereotypical "John Smith") of whom there may be a *lot*
born on the same date.


I’d always assumed that that was what the final xx was for - 26 x 26, or
30-something squared if you include digits except for 0 and 1, perhaps, 676
or more combinations. Anyone got enough data to hand to do a back of the
envelope calculation as to what the odds are of 676 J.Smiths being being
born on a single day?

Sam

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