Originally Posted by wehateporn

As a very rough guide, you say you normally get 3 or 4 sales per hour, so your probability of getting no sales in an hour is quite low, but for the sake of argument let's say that we're looking at someone with less sales than you, and their probability of getting no sales in 1 hour is 0.5 (i.e. 1 in 2)

So, this is someone with far weaker sales than you, let's take a look at their rough probability of getting no sales in 12 hours.

No sales in 1 hour = 0.5 = 1 in 2

No sales in 2 consecutive hours = 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4 = 1 in 4

No sales in 3 consecutive hours = 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 = 1 in 8

No Sales in 4 consecutive hours = etc = 1 in 16

No Sales in 5 = 1 in 32

No Sales in 6 = 1 in 64

No Sales in 7 = 1 in 128

No Sales in 8 = 1 in 256

No Sales in 9 = 1 in 512

No Sales in 10 = 1 in 1024

No Sales in 11 = 1 in 2048

No Sales in 12 = 1 in 4092


So with much weaker sales than MisterPeabodyCash one is likely to see this event of 12 consecutive hours with no sales 1 out of 4092 twelve hour periods, also known as 1 every 2048 days, that's just over once every 5 and a half years.

Whereas someone with better sales like yourself, let's say your probability of no sales in 1 hour is 0.3 (3/10)

It would look like this

No sales in 1 hour = 0.3 = 3 in 10

No sales in 2 consecutive hours = 3/10 * 3/10 = 9/100 = 9 in 100

No sales in 3 consecutive hours = 3/10 * 3/10 * 3/10 = 27 in 1000

No Sales in 4 consecutive hours = 81 in 10,000

No Sales in 5 = 243 in 100,000

No Sales in 6 = 729 in 1,000,000

..... blah blah blah

No Sales in 11 = 177,147 in 100,000,000,000

No Sales in 12 = 531,441 in 1,000,000,000,000

As this is all very approximate let's call it 500,000 in 1,000,000,000,000

= 1 in 2,000,000 (half days)

= 1 in 1,000,000 days (once every 2700 years)

i.e. lottery style odds (assuming all well with your servers, the Internet, banking system, third party processors etc)