Fact of the Day: 11/10/2020

Probability helps us to decipher the chances of a certain event occurring, like how likely it is to choose a white marble from a bag of red, white, and blue marbles, or how likely it is for you to win a poker game when all odds are against you. However, probability can help you figure out another interesting possibility…how likely you are to share a birthday with someone else in the room! How many people do you think need to be in the room for you to share a birthday with someone? About 365? Or maybe even 730? 

Basic probability studies (which exclude leap years in the calculations) have yielded a surprising result to this question. It turns out that in a room of just 23 people, the probability of two people sharing a birthday is over 50% (rounding to the nearest whole number, about 51%)! How cool is that? And if there are 50 people in the room, the probability of two people sharing a birthday rises to 97%.  So the next time you find out that someone else in the room shares your birthday, know that it isn’t just a coincidence, it’s math! 

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