Answer TRUE or FALSE.

A company wants to use a system where they randomly assign each customer a 9-digit ID (so there are 1 billion possible ID numbers). Of course, there is a chance that two customers will be assigned the same ID. But the company figures that risk is OK if the odds are only one in a million. They expect to assign IDs to 1000 customers. But the chance of collision is much higher than one in a million.

"True"
  • True
  • False

While it is true that the last customer given an ID has about one chance in a million of sharing it with another customer (actually, the chance is 999/1,000,000,000 if 999 IDs are already assigned)...

... this logic does not account for the fact that any of the previous 998 assignments might also have caused a collision.

So the chance for a collision is rather higher than one in a million.