The Birthday Problem 生日問題
- Example
- If n people are present in a room, what is the probability that no two of
them celebrate their birthday on the same day of the year? How large need nbe so that this probability is less then
?
- Solution:
- As each person can celebrate his or her birthday on any one of 365 days, there
is a total of (365)n possible outcomes. (We are ignoring the possiblity of
someone's having been born on February 29.) Assuming that each outcome is
equally likely, we see that the desired probability is
.
It is a rather surprising fact that when
n=23, this probability is less then
.
That is, if there are
23 people in a room, the probability that at least two of them have the same
birthday exceeds
.
Many people find this surprising. Perhaps
even more surprising, however, is that this probability increases to .970when there are 50 people in the room. And with 100 persons in the room, the odds
are better than 3,000,000 to 1 [that is, the probability is greater then
]
that at least two people have the same
birthday.