Birthday Paradox

Introduction:
Have you ever wondered what the probability of a few people in a room sharing a
birth date happens to be? Well, the answer might be a little unbelievable. It was in 1927 that
Davenport invented the Birthday Problem. The first publication of the Davenport version of
the Birthday Problem was in the 1939 Ball-Coxeter: Mathematical Recreations and Essays,
11th edition.1 He was not the only one to study the Birthday Problem in the 1900s Richard
von Mises, who adds that this question arose when a group of 60 people found that three of
them shared the same birthday. Von Mises decided to obtain a function of number of people
and finds an expected number pairs with the same birthday is about 1 when the group has
29 people, although the expected number of a pair of 3 is within a group pf 103 people.
However, as Von does not solve the usual problem a contrary to his paper was published in
1957 by Feller.
Wherein today according to the probability calculations, in a room of 23 unique
people, the chances of at least two people sharing a birthday is of about 50%. Not only this,
but there is a 99.9% chance when there are 75 people in a room! It sounds impossible but
mathematics has proven this to be valid and completely true.
We were first intrigued by this paradox when our teacher gave us a brief overview on
the topic. As we read more about this, it continued to blow our minds. However, it seemed
pretty possible as soon as both of us were able to work out the math behind this.
Not only was it this, but also the fact that I have an extremely unique birth date, 1st
January 2000, a new millennium, birth dates have always been something that have
intrigued me. Even though there might be several people born on the 1st of January there is
a one in a million chance theyd be born on the same date in the year 2000 as I am, wherein
all 365/366 birthdays are equally likely in mathematical terms, contributing an equal amount
of probability.

Parameters:
n: numbers of people,
1
P (A): Probability that any two people in Group 1 and Group 2 share the same birth date.
01
P(A): Probability that no two persons share the same birth date.
Where, P(A)= 1- P(A).

Group of 23:
23
No. of People=( ) = 253
2
364 m
Probability P(A) = 1 ( )
365

Where, m is the number of pairs.

The value of m can be found as: = ( )
2

Thus, the probability that two people will have same birth date can be calculated by first
finding the value of m (numbers of pairs), for a numbers of people (n).
2
For example, if n=2 then m= ( ) =1
2
364 1
Therefore, the probability is P(A) = 1 (365) = 0.0027

1 http://utenti.quipo.it/base5/introduz/singchro.htm
Similarly, we have found the probability for different values of n.

No. of people (n) No. of Pairs (m) Probability [p(n)]

2 1 0.0027
3 3 0.0082
4 6 0.0163
5 10 0.0271
6 15 0.0403
7 21 0.0560
8 28 0.0739
9 36 0.0940
10 45 0.1161
11 55 0.1401
12 66 0.1656
13 78 0.1926
14 91 0.2209
15 105 0.2503
16 120 0.2805
17 136 0.3114
18 153 0.3428
19 171 0.3745
20 190 0.4062
21 210 0.4379
22 231 0.4694
23 253 0.5005

Table1.1
According to data of 23 people that I have collected, the probability shall be more than
50%, than any one pair at least shares their birth date.

For a clearer picture of the birthday paradox using Table1.1 I am going to find the linear
relationship between the no. of people and the probability with the help of a Graphing
Software (Geo-Gebra).

Fig1.1
It is clear from this line graph that as the number of people are increasing the probability of a
pair of people sharing the same birth date is also increasing.
Now I will try to find the model function for the data calculated I Table1.1 with the help of the
Graphing Software (Geo-Gebra). By finding the model function I would be able find the exact
probability of the birth date that is shared by a pair of people according to the group size.

Fig 1.2

The model quadratic function which fits to the data set is:
= 0.00072 + 0.0083 0.0278 2 Table1.2

n p n p
2 -0.008 19 0.368
3 0.003 20 0.403
4 0.016 21 0.438
5 0.03 22 0.475
6 0.046 23 0.513
7 0.063 24 0.552
8 0.081 25 0.593
9 0.1 26 0.635
10 0.121 27 0.678
11 0.144 28 0.723
12 0.167 29 0.768
13 0.192 30 0.816
14 0.218 31 0.864
15 0.245 32 0.914
16 0.274 33 0.966
17 0.304 34 1.02
18 0.336 35 1.07

2 Geo-Gebra (Table to Equation)

The graph of the model function, fig1.2 appears to be a good fit to the data set of no. of people and
probability. Although, the probability found using the model function is negative for 2 people and
more than one for a group of people who are more than 33. Thus, the model function cannot be
taken as a favorable/best model to find the probability.

Now, to find the least number of people whose probability of sharing the same birthday would be
99.9% is a group of:

364
1( ) = 0.999
365

364
( ) = 0.001
365
364
( ) = ln(0.001)
365

ln(0.001)
=
364
ln
365
2518
To find the value of n, we know that,

( )=
2

( ) = 2518
2
Therefore,
!
= 2518
2! ( 2)!
( 1) ( 2)!
= 2518
2 ( 2)!
( 1)
= 2518
2
( 2) = 5036
2 2 5036 = 0
On solving the quadratic equation using the quadratic formula, we found that:
= 71.5
72
Conclusion:
Thus, we have found that as per the Birthday Paradox a group of 75 people would have a 99.9%
chance that two people share a birth date. Our findings are close to 75 by being 72.

Error dikha de if u want to

ADD IN RED COLOUR SO THAT I CAN SEE UR
EDITS PLEASE!!!