Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Birthday Paradox


Given a group of randomly chosen people, how big is the chance that two persons in this group share the same birthday? You can assume that each day of the year is equally probable for a birthday.

The answer might surprise you. In case of a group size of 23 people, the chance that there are two people in there with the same birthday, is already 50/50. A probability of 99% is reached with a group of only 57 people!