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The birthday problem for boys and girls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Tony Crilly  and
Shekhar Nandy
Tony Crilly
Affiliation:
City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, Mongkok, Hong Kong
Shekhar Nandy
Affiliation:
24 Studley Road, Luton, Bedfordshire
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Extract

The famous birthday problem is well known to regular Gazette readers. For those readers not familiar with it, the problem is to find the size of the smallest group of people for which there is a probability greater than one-half of two members of the group sharing a birthday. The answer (23 people) is a result which the eminent probability specialist William Feller described as “astounding”.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 71 , Issue 455 , March 1987 , pp. 19 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1987

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