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The Birthday Problem

Question 10 from Checkpoint 14.2 (Page 72) Ace Ahead STPM Text Mathematics (T) Third Term Statistics 1st August 2013 If a year is taken to have 365 days, including 29th February, and there are n

( 1 < n 365 ) peoples,

same birthday is

show that the probability that at least two peoples have the
365! 365n ( 365 n ) !

Solution
The probability that at least two peoples have the same birthday could be determined effortlessly if the probability that all birthdays are unique is known. This is due to the fact that, instead of saying at least two people has the same birthday; it would be rather liable to express the situation as someone shares his/her birthday with at least someone else. Hence, if the probability that all birthdays are unique is denoted by P ( A ) , then the probability that someone shares his/her birthday with at least someone else can be easily computed through the employment of complementary event, which is

P(A) = 1 P(A ).
If a person (Person 1 in this case) is selected at random from the sample of n peoples, and in order for all the birthdays are unique, Person 1s birthday could fall on any one day out of 365 days. Or, in other words, there are 365 possible days for his/her to get born. Subsequently, if the second person (Person 2) is selected at random after Person 1 is chosen, then there are 364 possible days remaining to be Person 2s birthday in such a way that all birthdays are unique. By assuming that the selection of people from the sample of n peoples whose birthdays are different is independent, then the total probability is equal to the product of the probabilities of each of the events occurring. In order to determine a general term for P ( A ) , it would be much easier to consider a sample of 30 peoples for

The Birthday Problem By Stephen, P. Y. Bong (1st August 2013)

2 instance, instead of n people. Therefore, if P ( A ) can be described as 30 independent events, then it could be computed and tabulated in Table 1 as shown: Table 1: Computation of probability that all birthdays are unique from a sample of 30 peoples Number of people selected, i
1 2 3

Number of possible days remaining, Xi

365 364 363 P ( Ai ) = Xi 365

365/365 364/365 363/365

30 Total

336
365

336/365 P(A ) =

i = 336

P ( Ai ) =

Xi 365 364 363 = 36530 i = 336 365

365

336

In terms of simplicity, P ( A ) = factorials:

365 364 363 365

30

336

could be expressed in terms of

P(A ) =

365 364 363 365! ( 365 30 ) ! 36530 365 ! 365

30

336 365 ! 365 364 363 336 335 334 333 = 335 334 333 1 ( 365 30 ) ! = 365 364 363 336 1

36530

= =

( 365 30 ) !

As a result, if the sample consists of n people, then the probability that at least two peoples have the same birthday is given by
P(A) = 1 P(A ) P(A) = 1 365! 365n ( 365 n ) ! where ( 1 < n 365 ) (Shown)

The Birthday Problem By Stephen, P. Y. Bong (1st August 2013)