Smallest class where a shared birthday is likely
Question
Take a year of equally likely birthdays. What is the smallest class size for which the chance that two or more students share a birthday exceeds one half?
Short answer
. The chance that birthdays are all different is . It first drops below at (about ), so the collision probability is then about .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
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