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Shared Birthdays
Many people might be surprised to meet someone who
shares their birthday. Should they be, though?
Mathematicians call this "the birthday problem." How big
does a group of people need to be before there's a
50-50 chance that two people share the same birthday?
The answer is a smaller number than most people think.
Consider it backward:
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99.18 percent chance that nobody shares a birthday. It's almost guaranteed. But the odds
improve as the group gets bigger.
If you have five people, there is a 97.3 percent chance nobody shares a birthday. But with 15
people, it drops to 74.7 percent. Your odds of finding a double birthday between the 15 people
improve.
By the time the group has 23 people, you have a 50 percent chance or better that at least two
people will share a birthday.
So by the time the group reaches 60 people, it's close to certain that there will be a birthday
match.
Monkey With A Typewriter
Another famous example of probability is called the monkey problem. Mathematician Emile
Borel came up with it over 100 years ago.
Borel wanted to know if a series of random events could ever lead to something meaningful. For
example, if a monkey started hitting the keys of a typewriter, would it eventually type out a
famous poem by William Shakespeare?
Borel said the answer was yes. He said that a monkey could eventually type out a poem, though
it might take a very long time. One of Shakespeare's famous poems begins with the line "Shall I
compare thee to a summer's day?" The chance of a monkey randomly typing "shall" is low 1
in 12 million.
But if the monkey keeps typing, or other monkeys help, the probability drops. If the monkey tries
8.2 million times, the monkey has more than a 50-50 chance of typing the word "shall" at some
point in the attempt.
Common Mistakes About Chance
Mazur writes that when people think about about probabilities, they often make common
mistakes.
A lot of mistakes have to do with something called selective attention. For example, people are
more likely to notice and remember coincidences. They remember the small number of people
who share their birthday. They don't remember all of the people who don't. This can cause some
confusion since the number of people who don't share their birthday is actually much larger.
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