Is the Birthday Paradox True?

793 Words2 Pages

Is the birthday paradox true or not?
If you survey a random group of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two of them people will have the same birthday? The objective of this project is to prove whether or not the birthday paradox is true by looking at random groups of 23 or more people. So to understand how the birthday paradox works we have to go into detail that will include explaining:
Probability Theory
 Converse Probability
 Birthday Paradox
First we are going to talk about probability theory, which has to do with mathematics and analysis of random phenomena. You are probably used to putting the number of outcomes over the total amount of the object or total amount what you have. An example is, if you have a normal dice and you want the probability of rolling an odd number, you would take the total amount of odd numbers (3) and put that over the total (6) amount of numbers on the dice like so 3/6 which you can also reduce it to ½ because 3 is half of 6. This theory has been around since the sixteenth century and started off as the outcome you would get in a game, which was created by Pierre de Fermat, Blaise Pascal and Gerolamo Cardano. Later on in the seventeenth century Christiaan Huygens published a book on the subject.
Converse probability is with the example on rolling an odd number to all the numbers is 3/6 – ½ then you switch it to look like 6/3 – 2/1. That is how simple converse probability is, so to talk about the birthday paradox. The birthday paradox has to do with probability and the understanding of how to use probability in real life situations. Interesting probability problems are about finding out how to put two and two together. When doing this you can also use a graphing calculator. The graphing ca...

... middle of paper ...

...ability and Statistics. (2009, August 19). In Cerebro.xu.edu. Retrieved March 18, 2014, from http://cerebro.xu.edu/math/Sources/Laplace/

 Cambridge University Press. (1975, March). Academic. In www.cambridge.org. Retrieved March 18, 2014, from http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/cosmology-relativity-and-gravitation/large-scale-structure-space-time

 Simon, S. (2005, March 19). Math Guy: The Birthday Problem. In http://www.npr.org. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4542341

 The Birthday Paradox (2013, November 18). In http://scientopia.org. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2013/11/18/the-birthday-paradox/

 Pierre Simon Laplace on Probability and Statistics . (n.d.). In cerebro.xu.edu. Retrieved March 24, 2014, from http://cerebro.xu.edu/math/Sources/Laplace/

Open Document