Mathematics

You Have to Share Your Birthday — But Not Necessarily Your Cake

23 people 50 percent chance of shared birthday


Put 23 people in a room and there is a statistical probability of 50% that two of them have the same birthday.

Increase the number of people to 70, and the odds are 99.9% two of them will celebrate their birth on the same date.

birthday paradox.png

Not convinced? See the math here.

Develop your Amazon birthday gift list here.


When is Easter? It’s Complicated….

Independence Day in the United States falls on July 4, year after year. New Year’s Day is always on the first of January. Christmas occurs on December 25, unless you are part of the Orthodox Church or live in Foula. Then we have Easter. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for its appearance…

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Was George Washington Born on Two Different Dates?

The stories about George Washington are so multitudinous that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. Did he have wooden teeth? Did he throw a silver dollar across the Potomac? Did he really cut down a cherry tree? While some of the legends may be hard to believe, there’s one that is definitely true:…

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You May Need to Adjust Your Clock … By 300 Years

Were you one of those history students who had difficulty grasping the details of the Middle Ages? Perhaps that’s because the Middle Ages didn’t actually take place. In 1986 Heribert Illig published Das erfundene Mittelalter (The Invented Middle Ages). He posits that a nearly-300 year period of time, AD 614–911, did not really take place…

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