Ms Baker referred to something that, on the face of it, seemed a remarkable coincidence but in fact was only simple probability.No you can't! In a random group of 23 people, there is a greater than 50/50 chance that two people in that group will share a birthday. Dr Math explains it here.It would seem a long shot to meet someone with the same birthday date as you, but in fact in a random group of just 23 people, there is a greater than 50/50 chance of meeting someone with the same birthday as you.
You can bet on it.
HOWEVER, that's not what the article says. The article says that in a random group of 23 people, there's a 50/50 chance that I will find someone with the same birthday as myself. That's patently absurd. As a matter of fact, I would need to get a group of 183 other people together in order for the probability of one of them having the same birthday as myself be more than 50%.
Someone has seriously misunderstood the birthday problem...
I know this goes against the assumptions of the problems, but just as a tangent - I wonder how much those probabilities would be skewed if we were to take the actual distribution of birthdays into account? Dang. One more thing I have to look up now. :)
ReplyDelete+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteSomeone has seriously misunderstood the birthday problem...
And someone is so good at maths that he can compute probabilities with the best of them! ;-)
Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteI suspect the difference is trivial... but I'm sure there's someone on the internet who has figured it out.
Enbrethiliel, I don't like it when you wink at me. It makes it 'sound' as though you've spotted an error in what I've written and are too coy to mention it. ;)
+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteI was just making sure I didn't come off as sarcastic! *deleted wink*