Have you ever heard of the birthday paradox? It is a statistical problem with a surprising solution. Given a room full of X people, how large must X be in order to achieve a 50:50 chance of finding 2 people with the same birthday? The answer is surprisingly small: 23.
But I think I throw that statistic out of whack. Of all my friends and acquaintances (both offline and online), I know not one, not two, but THREE people who share my birthday. Even more amazingly? TWO of them were born the exact same YEAR as me. One of them is Nine from Germany, a Myspace friend. The other is Francois, whom I know through the Geekhouse at UCSB. In fact, we once tried to figure out who was older, in terms of hours. I think Francois won. And then there's Justin, who's a year younger than me. Now, the funny thing is that the three of us (me, Francois and Justin) learned about out our shared birthday during a cocktail party at the Geekhouse. Those aren't large affairs. There are typically only around 25 people at such shindigs. So, here we are, in a house with JUST the right amount of people to fulfill the birthday paradox... and we ended up with a 100% chance of finding 3 of us. Neat, isn't it?
Anyway, without further ado, here is today's Friday Five. And just to keep this post from getting too long, I shall join the rest of you in answering them on the comments.
p.s. if you're experiencing deja vu, it's because I recycled some of the questions from a birthday-themed Friday Five that I did a couple years ago on Grab. Ah, sue me-- it's been long enough that most of us will have forgotten what the others originally wrote ;-)
1. How many candles were on your last birthday cake? And when is your birthday?
2. Does anyone else (famous and/or in your own life) share your birthday?
3. Do you think your astrological sign fits you pretty well? Why or why not?
4. Surprise parties: love 'em or hate 'em?
5. What do you want for your next birthday?
BONUS QUESTION:
6. Other than your loving partner (heh), from whom would you most like to receive a birthday kiss?
(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/389226471)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment. If you would like to reply to an existing comment thread, click the "Reply" link under the comment you wish to reply to, and follow the copy-and-paste instructions that appear.