zanev wrote:[If you have 23 people, and 2 of them have the same birthday, then that means 2 out of 23 people have the same birthday...2 people / 23 . which is 0.08%
Ah, now I see what you're getting at... I think.
But no, for one thing 2/23 is .08, which is equal to 8 %, not .08%... .08 % is actually 2/2300, you see (that decimal point changes things by a factor of 100).
In the second place, your ratio would seem to indicate that a match-up is LESS likely with LARGER goups of people. For example, are you saying the odds are only 2/50 if there are fifty people involved? That doesn't follow numeric logic at all.
Anyway, howeve you figured it and despite what seems like common sense,
supposedly the odds of any 2 of the 23 people having the same birthday is actually slightly better than 50%. I don't know
why this should be, but I've heard this several times before... the fist time many years ago. Something to do with Chaos Theory, I suppose. That is, even seemingly totally random events will show some pattern given enough incidents... such as winning lottery numbers.
Of course, the chances are almost equally great that the birthday matchup in a group of 23 *won't* happen - as indeed it won't at least 1 time out of every 2 (more or less).
However, I myself *would* like to see this matchup in such a small group actually demonstrated - if only to prove that this isn't just another myth someone made up.
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