Water Cooler Small Talk: The Birthday Paradox 🎂🎉 | by Maria Mouschoutzi, PhD | Sep, 2024

Knowledge Science | Statistics

A have a look at the counterintuitive arithmetic of shared birthdays

Water cooler small speak is a particular form of small speak, usually noticed in workplace areas round a water cooler. There, workers regularly share all types of company gossip, myths, and legends, inaccurate scientific opinions, indiscreet private anecdotes, or outright lies. Something goes. So, in my Water Cooler Small Speak posts, I focus on unusual and often scientifically invalid opinions I’ve overheard within the workplace which have actually left me speechless.

Right here’s the water cooler opinion of as we speak’s publish:

I work in an workplace flooring with 60+ folks, and final week two of them had their birthdays on the identical day. Realizing they shared their birthday, they’d a dialog someplace alongside the next strains:

– I can’t imagine we’ve got our birthdays on the identical day!

– Sure, what are the probabilities?

..and everybody commented on how unusual it was. A loopy, karmic coincidence…

🌌🥳

However for actual, what are the probabilities? With a fast estimation, one might imagine that the probabilities of such an occasion must be very low…