Comments | yagowe: Forgive Me My SINs - A Peek Inside Yagowe's Head

yagowe

Forgive Me My SINs - A Peek Inside Yagowe's Head

Feb 08, 2007 11:37

I see a lot of Social Insurance Numbers* in my job- every document that comes through has to have a SIN on it, and if it doesn't we have to write it on. Because of the way my mind works I'm constantly looking for patterns in the numbers. After a while I began to notice that at least one of the 3-digit clusters was often a palindrome ( Read more... )

work, math

Comments 6

rectangularcat February 8 2007, 22:27:34 UTC

what I want to know - are there any regional/date patterns to the numbers?

yagowe February 8 2007, 23:19:56 UTC

Regional definitely, since the first digit varies by province. And date of issue affects how high the number is.

But there are some other patterns, I'm certain, because there are some numbers that *can't* be SINs (as I discovered when I tried to enter one that someone had written down wrong)- there's something inherent in the number that even a really simple computer program can use to tell when it is invalid. I'm sure with some research I could find out what the key is, but I'm making a game of trying to ferret it out just from the numbers themselves.

rectangularcat February 8 2007, 23:47:14 UTC

so BC is 7 and ontario 4?

yagowe February 8 2007, 23:56:49 UTC

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_insurance_number
4&5 are Ontario, and 7 is BC and the Yukon. (I mostly see BC ones, so I hadn't completely figured out the rest of the regions).

In trying to find that answer, my own question was answered as well. And a good thing, too, because I'd never have figured out that algorithm on my own.

Thread 6