Odds of IRS hard drive failures well beyond astronomically against

American Digest:

7 Hard Drives Failing: What are the odds? These are the odds.

I run a data center. Disk drives that are left running continuously last between two and three years. Three years is about 36 months.

The odds of a disk failing in any given month are roughly one in 36. The odds of two different drives failing in the same month are roughly one in 36 squared, or 1 in about 1,300. The odds of three drives failing in the same month is 36 cubed or 1 in 46,656. The odds of seven different drives failing in the same month is 37 to the 7th power = 1 in 78,664,164,096.

Of course this is very simplified because disk failure modes are more at end-of-service-life rather than linearly spread over median life. So what if I am off by a factor of 4X? This crude calculation gets us into the same astronomical ballpark. You could insure against this event happening by buying lottery tickets. --theBuckWheat Comment at Doug Ross @ Journal: GEORGE WILL ON MIRACULOUS IRS COINCIDENCE OF CRASHED HARD DRIVES: "Religions Have Been Founded on Less"

Let the record reflect that I am not a mathematician and certainly not a statistician. But ISTM that the data center operator's math and methodology are incorrect. I think he has made a statistical error in treating the HDs failures as related events when they are independent events.

If the expected life span of an HD is 36 months, and for simplicity ignoring that failures occur nearer the end than the beginning, then each HD has a 1/36 chance of failing in any given month - regardless of what the HD one office away does. So the 1/36 odds per hard drive never change.

The incredulity therefore is not over failing HDs per se, but that the exact same people for whom the committee wants to read their emails are the ones whose HDs failed, and at the same time.

As Yogi Berra said in a different context, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

To calculate the odds of that we have to place those HDs into the universe of possibles, which would be the total number of like workstations in the entire IRS.

Googling tells me that the IRS has 89,500 employees. Not all have email, of course, but let's be very generous and say only 50,000 do. That's 50K HDs, each with a 1/36 chance of failure in any given month.

That means that in any given month, 1/36 of the 50K drives will fail, or 1,388 drives each month.

But - and feel free to check my math - that means that the chances of specifically Lerner's HD failing in that particular month is 1/1,388. And the same odds for each of the other six drives.

That's where you start multiplying the odds together. Excel tells me that 1/1388 is 0.00072, or 0.072 percent chance. Now we calculate the odds of all seven specific HDs failing, which is .072 pc X .072 ... seven times.

And that makes the final odds 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent.

Expressed in notation, it is 1.01E-66. (I'm letting Excel calculate all this.)

To what may we compare this? Well, how about the number of stars in the entire universe? According to space.com,

Kornreich used a very rough estimate of 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. Multiplying that by the Milky Way's estimated 100 billion stars results in a large number indeed: 100 octillion stars, or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, or a "1" with 29 zeros after it. Kornreich emphasized that number is likely a gross underestimation, as more detailed looks at the universe will show even more galaxies.

I have never seen an estimate of 10 trillion galaxies before, the top number I have ever seen in "only" 500 billion. But let's leave it at 10 T:

Number of stars in 10 trillion galaxies: 1.00E+29

Odds of those seven particular IRS HDs failing the same month:
1.01E-66.

Please note that according to Universe Today, there are about 1.0E+80 atoms in the entire universe.

So the odds against those seven identified HDs failing at the same time is sensibly comparable to the inverse of the number of atoms in the entire universe.

Again, I would welcome math checking!

Update: I got an email from a long-time reader who signed his name but asked me to protect it. He has someone with three and a half decades of experience in this sort of thing. Here is is, unedited:

While I don't believe for a second the IRS's excuses, these putative spontaneous disk drive failures wouldn't necessarily be independent events.  The phrase "common mode failure" strikes fear in the hearts of engineers, and it's been observed many times that a batch of disks fail at about the same time.  Perhaps their shipping container got banged a little to much in transit from the Far East (best guess we had at one point for a common problem with Seagate drives).  Or a common part or design flaw in the same or more than one lot of disks.  IF these computers were all deployed at the same time from the same source it *could* happen with not quite so astronomical odds.... Also, a few years ago a couple of studies of massive installations of hard drives was done, one by Google (takeaways were that disk drive engineers seem to have a very good handle on heat, and 1/2 of those that fail will do so without any warning), and one of a number of huge supercomputers, which had thousands of drives. The relevant detail from that study is that disk drives don't follow the bathtub curve of failure.  They almost always work out of the box, and start wearing down sometime in their 2nd year of service. I focus more on the timing, Lerner's drive supposedly failed 10 days after the letter from the Congressman got things rolling, they canceled their backup service 2 months after the letter, the other convenient failures, with the clearest sign of ill will being the IRS's discarding of her drive, instead of sending it to a recovery facility.  You'resimply not allowed to do the latter once you're on notice, unless, of course, you're above the law.  Which this crowd currently is. Anyway, the above nits aside, I've found your blog to be very worthwhile over the years, I'm glad you've back from your pause, and am looking forward to your essay on why the Republicans will never gain the presidency again.

Hillary too ill, too old - what a coincidence

The Daily Caller:

If you listen to the chattering class in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton is a virtual certainty for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and the front-runner in the next presidential race.

But in private, rumors persist that the former Secretary of State may not even be capable of making it to Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, these skeptics often say, will not run for president again because of health concerns.

These ubiquitous rumors of her health have been fueled in part by the supermarket tabloids. The National Enquirer wrote in 2012 that Clinton had brain cancer, something a spokesman dismissed then as “absolute nonsense.” In January of this year, the Globe claimed that Clinton secretly had a brain tumor.

Asked about her health on Thursday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email to The Daily Caller: ”To your question, very caring of you to ask. She’s 100%.”

But the rumors suggesting otherwise date back to the end of 2012, when Clinton’s health made headlines as she finished her term as secretary of state: aides explained then that she developed a stomach virus, hit her head, suffered a concussion and subsequently developed a blood clot in her brain but was being medicated and was expected to recover.

But skeptics say there is much more to the story of her health, which has recently been the subject of increased speculation in Washington.

Yes, but why have these reports and rumors been recent "subject of increased speculation in Washington?" Funny how this speculation and rumormonging popped up in multiple media at the same time. As Yogi Berra said about another topic, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

Politics ain't pattycake. Someone is already trying to torpedo Hillary2016. Who would want to do that?

Dust storm by the hand of God?

Israeli News Network posted video of a large dust storm that appeared almost exactly above the border between Israel and Syria along the Golan Heights. The storm was Dec. 1.

Claims are being made that a biblical storm cloud of dust and rain was 'sent by God' to act as a barrier between Israel and ISIS .

The huge storm allegedly stopped on the border of Syria, and was 'unable' to enter Israel's Golan Heights region. ...

One Facebook user replied: Absolutely the divine intervention of God protecting Israel. Amen!"

Other more cynical viewers disagreed, adding: "Actually, sorry to be boring, but it's simply a weather phenomenon."

But Israel News Online hit back almost immediately, writing: "Yes it is of course. Now do we ask who controls the weather? Whatever the cause it sat between ISIS and Israel and did not enter Israel."

So, an act of God or freak of nature? Let's compare to the famous parting of the Red Sea by Moses when the recently-liberated Hebrew slaves of Egypt were fleeing Pharaoh's pursuing army. Probably this is the most famous cinematic rendition there is, from Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses:



The problem is that that this scene occurs nowhere in the Bible. Yes, Moses did hold his staff over the waters after being so ordered by God, but let's let Exodus 14 speak for itself from then:

21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, 22 and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

Did you read carefully? "... all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind.. ."

The same question applies to the strong east wind as to the Syrian-border's dust storm: was it an act of God or a freak event of nature?

Well, both events were acts of nature, after all, and doubtless can be explained in meteorological ways. But is that all there is to it? Maybe that great theologian Yogi Berra had some insight: "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

The fix and its timeline

Read the whole thing.

Let's review the timeline:

June 28 -- US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who will make the final decision on whether to prosecute Hillary Clinton, meets in her aircraft off the record and closed to media with Bill Clinton, the husband of the woman whose fate is in Lynch's hands. AG Lynch insists later that they simply talked about grandchildren, of which Lynch has exactly zero, and that the criminal investigation never came up.

July 1 -- Lynch says that she will accept the recommendations to prosecute or not made by the career DOJ prosecutors and the FBI.

July 3 -- The New York Times reports that, "Democrats close to Mrs. Clinton say she may decide to retain Ms. Lynch, the nation’s first black woman to be attorney general, who took office in April 2015."

July 5  -- President Obama flies in Air Force One to pick up Hillary Clinton for their flight together to a campaign event in Charlotte, NC. Obama permits HRC to speak from the presidential podium complete with the seal of the president and ensures that other photos display HRC near the regalia of the president's office.



Ah, what wonderful optics! Especially since on that very day:

FBI Director James Comey lays out a massively overwhelming case for criminal prosecution of Mrs. Clinton and then says the Bureau will not recommend such because, "She didn't mean to," an excuse that I found out went nowhere when I was 5 years old.



Short transcript: "James Comey Sells Out." Verbatim transcript.

July 6 (added) -- Well, that didn't take long. AG Lynch has already announced that Comey's word is the last word. And. Hillary. Walks!

What an astonishing sequence of events, both in content and in time, that have nothing to do with each other! As that great political analyst Yogi Berra once said, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

And this is good for a laugh.



Update: A former US credentialed diplomat writes that this whole this is "Banana Trees All the Way to the Horizon:"

When Comey announced that he did not think any "reasonable prosecutor" (weird term) would seek an indictment of Hillary based on the evidence, "Banana Republic" was all I could think. I have spent many years in Banana Republics and know the sound, feel, and smell of them. I could see, feel, and smell acres and acres of trees sagging under the burden of nice ripe, sweet bananas all the way to the horizon and beyond. For starters, clearly what Comey said about nobody knowing the content of his address was incorrect. At a minimum, AG Lynch knew; she probably passed that info to President Obama and to Hillary's husband, and both of them passed it to Hillary. Note that Obama scheduled his campaign stop today with Hillary in tow, well before Comey's press event. He would have done that only if he knew that Comey would recommend no prosecution. All this is in the bananas portion of this evening's entertainment.

Speaks for itself:

Yogi Berra on $400 Million Iran ransom

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. [Link]

The administration insists that the $400 Million payout has no relationship to the hostages Iran just happened to release at the same time. No relationship at all, none, nada, zip, null set.

Well, of course. But remember what Yogi Berra once observed: "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

And it's also such a coincidence that Berra's line applies over and over to this administration and its doings.

Update: "This is not the first time Obama has paid a ransom to the mullahs."

Two perfect records wrecked today

Two NFL teams with perfect records got those records wrecked today.

The formerly undefeated Green Bay packers went down in a shocker to Kansas City, 19-4. That makes the Packers's W-L numbers 13-1.

At the same time, for formerly winless Indianapolis Colts beat the Tennessee Titans 27-13, making the Colts 1-13.

Isn't that a curious coincidence? I am reminded of Yogi Berra's observation, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

Obviously, the number of wins and losses in the NFL must equal. After all, in every game one teams loses and the other wins (disregarding the extremely rare tie game, allowed by rule but very difficult actually to obtain).

And if the Packers had won today and the Colts also, the ratio of 1:1 win-loss across the league would not have changed. Still, it's almost eerie that both teams had a "1" entered onto their respective records at the same time. Seems sort of cosmic... .

But there is no determinism at work here. Going into today's game, there were six teams with 10-3 records, but none with 3-10.

Tax break for delinquents just in time for November!

Gee, what possibly could be behind the brand-new, White-House-originated directive to the IRS to settle for 25 cents on the dollar for large-scale tax delinquents?

This is a time limited offer! So act before midnight tonight! Okay, not midnight tonight, but a day about two weeks before election day.

As Yogi Berra once, said, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

The story:

Eric Holder's gun-ban list of 'mental defectives' is mostly veterans

Eric Holder's gun-ban list of 'mental defectives' is mostly veterans - Washington Times

Funny how the DOJ identifies as ineligible to own guns the largest group of people in the country who actually know how to use guns. As the great political analyst Yogi Berra said, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence."

I am old enough to recall when Democrats would have all recoiled at the idea that someone's Constitutional rights could be denied just because their name got secretly put on a secret government list, without recourse by law. But apparently not any more.