Comments on: [It Got Away] Vermont License Plates

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:13:58 +0000

Here in Victoria (a state of Australia) we have the same licence plate system. Three letters, then three numbers. We’re currently up to the Uxx-nnn series I think, at least I haven’t seen any new plates starting with Vs yet. My car which was bought in 2000 has a numberplate of the form QIx-nnn.

By: Brendan Murpy

Brendan Murpy — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:28:08 +0000

I think if you included data for the number of plates returned each year, or put back into circulation might give a fairly nice linear trend. At least that would be the hope.

Also I noticed that WTF wasn’t disallowed.

By: BrianMartin

BrianMartin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:33:26 +0000

New Jersey ran out of numbers and changed formats:
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/state/nj-license-plates-will-change-next-year

From AAA-10A format to the reverse A10-AAA.
(It appears from the article that NJ does not use 0 as the first of the two numbers.)

VT & NJ both use 6 characters, but even without using I, O, & Q (to avoid confusion with 1 & 0), NJ has a lot more combinations using 4 letters & 2 numbers compared to VT’s 3 & 3 format. Even so, the article says NJ estimates this system will last only about 20 years.

By: BrianMartin

BrianMartin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:19:09 +0000

Maybe you could get figures from a few other states and figure out how bad this system would be for California or some other larger state and then determine at what annual average of new plates it is unworkable if a state does not want to run out of numbers in less than 30 years? 50 years?

Would this system work only in the smallest states or would it work in states with 2, 5, or 10 times more license plates than Vermont?

By: DavidC

DavidC — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:42:21 +0000

@Tom: What would the data have to be like for you to call it “continuous”?

I’m not sure the lines were bad.

By: dy/dan » Blog Archive » The Yellow Pages Are My PLC

dy/dan » Blog Archive » The Yellow Pages Are My PLC — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:59:42 +0000

[…] [It Got Away] Vermont License Plates. I called the Vermont DMV and received a trove of information about license plate issuance, including the combinations of letters they don't allow. […]

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:05:06 +0000

After reading the comments so far, I’m left wondering about the value of this problem in the context of Todd’s “getting it right”. I believe that this problem is valuable to students because it can give them a better impression of how one goes about determining when *not* to continue to do something. So many students (myself included at times) do not know when to stop or even know the signs of completion within the problem solving process. The fact that this one “got away” speaks to the fundamental limitations that putting a functional framework on a problem can produce. The problem is no less important in my mind, and can be used to assist students in understanding that we can count the number of plates possible and give estimates for how long the count will last, but in the end there is no tidy little answer and we must accept a partial understanding of the situation.

On a purely unrelated jam band note, the fact that Dan posts from Vermont and titled this entry “it got away” can’t be a coincidence as far as I’m concerned.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:09:05 +0000

Can someone clarify this for me (from the list of restrictions):

“I — O — Q — J — U — V — Z

(No combinations starting with or including any of these letters.)”

Does this preclude these letters entirely? Am I misreading, or is it worded incorrectly?

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:06:53 +0000

I don’t really see enough through my math goggles, but from what I can tell I’m glad you stopped on this one. Almost as soon as you worded the thing you wondered about, it felt like a word problem from the old days. What I like about the ones that have worked is that they ask a compelling question that demands an answer. This one, not so much.

And it’s as crucial to examine why *not* to do something as why *to* do something. We all need to think about both sides of the issue more in the quest to get it right.

By: Chirs Sears

Chirs Sears — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:14:49 +0000

I’ll have to fire up Excel sometime tomorrow.

I think if you looked at the cumulative number of license places assigned, you would get a more interesting graph. It should be vaguely quadratic.