Worried you might be a mathematician?

Are you? I used to be. But fret no more! There is a foolproof way to quantify your inner mathematician. The test is quick, painless and has nothing to do with how many digits of pi you have memorized or how fast can you do integrals. This is not what math is about. And we are not testing, whether you are a high shool science geek, we are testing if you really are a mathemetician inside, regardless of current profession. The test is based on a story of a farmer

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bosnia/7899549/Man-claims-aliens-targeted-his-home-with-meteorites.html

whose house was apparently struck by meteors 6 times during last couple of years. He believes it's aliens who are messing with him, and he reinforced his roof in case they do it again. Anyone with half a brain cell knows that meteor strikes are random events and being struck once neither increases nor lowers your chances of being struck in the future*. This is why it is completely pointless to buy a new roof after being hit - the probability that you will need it is still the same it was before - virtually zero. But even if you are perfectly aware of that, after the 100th meteorite you would certainly give up and buy the damned steel roof or move to another house ... Or would you?

So here comes the test. The answer to the question is the amount of pure mathematician in you on a scale of 0 to Paul Erdős**.

How many verified meteor strikes would it take to convince you to buy a steel roof and an insurance?

If you answered:

0, i would buy it just in case

- Congratulations! You are definitely not a mathematician. Plus the steel roof will go nicely with your tin foil hat.

1

- Congratulations! You don't know the first thing about probability but at least you are not a mathematician!

2, 3

- Congratulations! You are not superstitious but you know better than to argue with reality.

4

- Borderline case.

Sane ends here.

5+

- I have bad news for you. The test was positive.

50+

- You are a mathematician with a death wish.

1000+

- You are doing it on purpose.

No finite number of meteors would convince me.

-Congratulations! Your Erdős number is <1.

If you passed, go test others. Test your friends, test your family - just to be on the safe side. In particular test all the professors you know. It would be interesting to know how many sleeper cell mathematicians are there among other scientists, and how many practicing mathematicians are sane. Send me the results.

*mathematician would say that it's a Poisson process.

**gauss would be such a nice unit of inner mathness, shame it's already taken

PS

Did you believe the farmer's story explanation involving magnetic anomaly attracting meteors? If yes, then i have another good news for you - you are not a physicist either!