Philip J. Erdelsky's The Birthday Paradox Theory

In probability theory, The Birthday Paradox serves as a proposal that in a room of twenty-three people, there is a 50% chance that two or more people within that room share the same birthdate. The legendary source of this paradox claims to be discovered and first practiced by Richard von Mises, who posed the theory in 1939, However, the first practicing of The Birthday Paradox is, in all originality, Harold Davenport, who discovered this theory in 1927, making it the earliest discovery of this paradox. Another practice of the theory was taken into account by Philip J. Erdelsky, a computer programmer of over twenty years as well as a research and development engineer for eight. Erdelsky tested the paradox in his college years. Within his discovery, Erdelsky hypothesized that no person was born on February 29th, although birthdates were equally apportioned throughout 365 days of an average year. In conclusion to his college experimentation, Erdelsky found this theory on the recurrence of birth dates in a select group to be true.

It is globally apparent that all around the world, many people share

the same birthdate. Twins, triplets and quadruplets are prime examples of someone’s birthday occurring on the same day as another individual's.The distribution of a birthday is governed by three factors: biology (a woman’s menstrual cycle), climatology (the weather playing a role in whether or not coitus will occur), and sociology (pertaining to a person's reasoning for having or not having coitus at whatever specific time was stated) (Kazid, 2015, Understanding the Birthday Paradox). There are only 365 days in a regular year and over three-hundred thousand people worldwide are born everyday. So, in statistics, more than three-hundred thousand people share the same birthdate. Humans don’t normally consider that others may share the same birthdate as them. Generally, humans find it rare that they meet someone who was born on the same day, and even more rare to be born in the same year. However, throughout mathematical research it has been proposed that it is not so uncommon for two individuals to meet another who was born on the same day.

After conducting an experiment that contained three groups of twenty-three random individuals, the theory was found to be completely false.

The Birthday Paradox theory was discovered to hold to it’s truth 66.7% of the time, meaning that this theory is based off of some presence of logic and is most likely bound to occur. However, since the paradox did not occur in all three group experiments, it is untrue. Looking further into research documents of other experimentations on the paradox, which were found to be true, it was decided that something had to contribute to this theory taking place more often than not. Although “The Birthday Paradox” is claimed to be an concurrence of events with no given connection, it seems that there has to be some form of connection which would pertain to why the people in each random group were in the same random location at the same

time.

Astrology pertains to the scientific study of how relations and positions of elements in the solar system influences the course of natural human actions and behavior. The zodiac exists as a group of twelve divisions in which the twelve months of a year are divided into sections. Within each section lies a different zodiac sign, whether it be Cancer, Capricorn, Aquarius, etc. In Zodiology, there are four different groups in which three signs belong to, these four different groups can be known as elements of the world such as: earth, air, fire, and water. Although many people choose to believe Astrology and Zodiology, it is undetermined whether this theory actually works and holds to its truth. Each group of elements claim to hold three different zodiacs, alike in character, that are said to be highly compatible with one another. This raises the theory that if a group of people share the same or similar zodiac signs, that are determined to be compatible by Astrology, these people will think alike and tend to live their lives on similar routines and paths of thinking.

Once the examination of how Astrology affects The Birthday Paradox, it was concluded that in this particular experiment, Astrology proved to be effective and worked. Each of the three groups surveyed, although each group did not prove the paradox to be true, held zodiac signs that are known to be highly compatible. The birthdates in the group that did not pass the paradox’s procedure had several birthdays that were very close in range, and did contain zodiac figures that worked well together. Based on these results, it is now considered that The Birthday Paradox theory may not have been considered mainly on the mathematical point of view, however, it is more so determined on the astronomical point of view.

The Birthday Paradox, after close examination and research, is shown to be a theory based on mathematics, but proven to occur due to science. Astrology is the only known reasoning for why this occurence appears to happen so often, and it is very likely that in a random group of twenty-three people there will be at least two or more people with the same birthday. In one group, four people shared the same birthday, and in another, six people shared the same birthday, all in groups of twenty-three randomly chosen individuals that happened to be in the same place at the same time. Due to this discovery, it is safe to say that based on the research done throughout this particular experimentation, that Astrology proves to be effective in ways of bringing similar people with closely numbered birth dates together at the same destination. Although this paradox does not work one-hundred percent of the time, in most cases one will find that the paradox does in fact hold to its truths, and Astrology holds to its truth even more often than the paradox had claimed to be.

The hypothesis of this experiment was that if a group of twenty-three random people were surveyed, then there would be at least two people with the same birthday because mathematics show that there is a fifty percent chance of this event happening. At the end of this experimentation, the hypothesis proved to be incorrect, and the set theory is now shown to be a false statement that was justified only by mathematic purposes, rather than the clear purpose for these birthdates occuring so often in the set groups of people, this purpose being that Astrology brought these individuals to the same destination at the same time due to their compatability and alikeness in character based on the date they were born. This experiment configured that the idea of Astrology appears to be in effect, while the theory of The Birthday Paradox is wrong and incorrect.