[ANNOUNCE] London Perl Mongers Technical Meeting 12th April 2010

[Christopher Jones]

On 27 Mar 2010, at 18:16, Dave Cross <dave at dave.org.uk> wrote:

> On 03/27/2010 09:10 AM, Luis Motta Campos wrote:
>> Dave Cross wrote:
>>> On 03/27/2010 08:13 AM, Uri Guttman wrote:
>>>
>>>> and paul and i share the same birthday. not sure what that means.
>>>
>>> I expect you'll find it's a coincidence :-)
>>
>> As a mathematician I must say coincidences have really low  
>> probability
>> of happening...
>
> Given the number of people who have birthdays and the relatively  
> small number of days available to have them on - you might want to  
> recheck your working there :)

According to someone cleverer than me, you need a group of only 57  
people to have a 99% chance that two of them will share a birthday....  
This odd result of probability is called the "Birthday Paradox";

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem?wasRedirected=true


Chris