Stats on fancy serial numbers

dursin · 04-14-2009, 04:00 PM

After reading some of the recent notes on fancy serial numbers I became curious as to how many notes in a given run would qualify as fancy. Given a run from 1 to 96000000, I came up with the following:

5 Ladder notes (3 forward, 2 reverse)
8 Solid
660 Single digit notes (00040000, 99299999, etc...)
9,591 Radar
9,591 Repeater
10,671 Binary
657,889 Trinary

So, looks like Radar, Repeaters and Binary notes are close to equal in rarity at approximate 1 out of 10,000, ladder and Solid are extremely rare and Trinary seem to be too common to be worth any premium.

**Daggarjon** · 04-14-2009, 04:48 PM

12345678, 234567890, 01234567, 34567890, 45678901, 11121314, 22232425 .. ect

there are way more then 5 ladders in a complete run of notes. Radars, because the 1st 4 digits have to equal the last 4 digits, yes, 1 in about 10,000. Number has done an extremely nice discussion on that somewhere

dursin · 04-14-2009, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daggarjon

12345678, 234567890, 01234567, 34567890, 45678901, 11121314, 22232425 .. ect

there are way more then 5 ladders in a complete run of notes. Radars, because the 1st 4 digits have to equal the last 4 digits, yes, 1 in about 10,000. Number has done an extremely nice discussion on that somewhere

Only ones I count are 012345678, 12345678, 23456789, 87654321 and 76543210. I don't really consider any others to be ladders, especially onles like 11121314, 22232425, etc...

**Daggarjon** · 04-14-2009, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dursin

Only ones I count are 012345678, 12345678, 23456789, 87654321 and 76543210. I don't really consider any others to be ladders, especially onles like 11121314, 22232425, etc...

oh sure

if you want to make it easier to count lol

dursin · 04-14-2009, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daggarjon

oh sure

if you want to make it easier to count lol

Actually after looking at many sites, the reason I didn't count those others as ladders is because...they are not ladders. Wasn't that hard to count either...wrote a small C++ program to iterate through all possible serial numbers from 1 through 96,000,000 and had it keep track of the interesting ones.

I looked through just about all of Numbers posts (8 pages worth) and while he has commented on the frequency of certain fancy serial numbers, I couldn't find any post which went into detail on them...if I missed it and someone else comes across the post, please reply with the link.

Thanks!

btw: Some interesting info on this site:
http://www.iccurrency.com/ref_fancy.htm

**RickieB** · 04-14-2009, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daggarjon

12345678, 234567890, 01234567, 34567890, 45678901, 11121314, 22232425 .. ect

there are way more then 5 ladders in a complete run of notes. Radars, because the 1st 4 digits have to equal the last 4 digits, yes, 1 in about 10,000. Number has done an extremely nice discussion on that somewhere

I recall seeing that Thread and reading it...Great info to say the least!!
Still a good post dursin...but if you find Numbers Thread check it out!!

RickieB

**Daggarjon** · 04-14-2009, 10:39 PM

not to be (too) arguementative.. but isnt a 'ladder' a note that either sequentially goes up or down in the numbers of the serial? A pattern that forms as a result... why wouldnt 11121314 or 12341235 be ladders? ir 12341234 can be a repeater, then 12341235 should be a ladder....

just thinking out loud

Numbers · 04-14-2009, 11:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daggarjon

not to be (too) arguementative.. but isnt a 'ladder' a note that either sequentially goes up or down in the numbers of the serial? A pattern that forms as a result... why wouldnt 11121314 or 12341235 be ladders? ir 12341234 can be a repeater, then 12341235 should be a ladder....

just thinking out loud

The problem with "ladder" is that people apply it to all sorts of things, all of which are kinda-sorta similar to a perfect ladder like 12345678, but not very similar to each other. So pretty soon the word ends up covering almost anything if you're not careful....

For example, people might apply the word "ladder" to:

-stuttering ladders like 11234445 or even 11245779
-ladder progressives like 00012345 or 67890000
-ladderish numbers with random zeroes thrown in, as 34050678
-serials like you mentioned above, as 12 13 14 15 or 78 79 80 81
-the same with extra zeroes allowed, as 56 0 57 0 58 or even 56 57 00 58

At some point one has to draw the line. It's pretty well agreed that the five numbers Dursin mentioned are definitely ladders, plus 98765432 back when it used to be printed. Beyond that, some people won't agree with the term "ladder" being applied, so better to leave them out to avoid an argument.

(Personally, I think 11245779 is "more of a ladder" than 12131415. But that's a vague enough concept that I don't expect anyone else to *care* what I think, frankly....

)

And, y'know, I thought I'd posted something like this thread way-back-when as well, but I can't now find it either. Must've been a mass hallucination or something.... Anyway, thanks for the calculations, Dursin!