Birthday Paradox
What is it?
The birthday paradox is a statistical phenomenon that states that in a group of people, there is a higher probability of two people sharing the same birthday than you might initially expect.
The Birthday Paradox is a probability concept that seems counterintuitive at first glance. It revolves around the likelihood of two or more people in a group sharing the same birthday. The paradox is that it takes a surprisingly small number of people for there to be a high probability that at least two of them share a birthday.
Here's a simple example to illustrate the Birthday Paradox:
Imagine you're at a party with 23 people, including yourself. You might think that the chances of two people sharing the same birthday are quite low, given that there are 365 days in a year. However, the Birthday Paradox tells us that there's actually a 50% chance that at least two people at the party have the same birthday!
The reason behind this is that the number of possible birthday pairs increases exponentially with the number of people in the group. With 23 people, there are 253 unique pairs, each of which has a 1 in 365 chance of sharing a birthday. When you combine all these probabilities, the overall likelihood that at least one pair has the same birthday is surprisingly high.
The Birthday Paradox doesn't say that it's likely for someone in the group to share a birthday with you specif ...