Jingsamichty

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today...00/7558786.stm

Tried this quiz, and I am absolutely stumped by one of the answers - the birthday one.

Can anyone shed any light on the reasoning behind this?

Alberta_Rose

Can't help you .... I only got the socks and the bear questions right (and I already knew the answer to the bear one!)

Biiiiink

5/6 and I'm officially fick at maths I got the equator string wrong.

Ben W Bell

Based on probabilities you're comparing each person's birthday against every single other person. In a group of 50 you're comparing yourself against 49 other people, and everyone else is doing the same.

If you were to pick two of those people and see if they had the same birthday the odds would be about 1/365. However you're not, you're comparing everyone against everyone else.

Now remember that this is based on probabilities, and actual real statistics most likely don't support the maths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox

Oakvillian

I remember learning about this at school - I'm enough of a math geek to have thought it really cool then, and still do now. We had a school list with everyone's name and date of birth, about 20 pages of 30 names to a page. Our teacher challenged us to guess on how many pages there would be two people with the same birthday. Most of us guessed way below the answer, which was about two thirds of them (probability that any two people in a random group of 30 share a birthday is about 70%).

Alberta_Rose

Did you work them all out mathematically though? .... or did you just guess?

Biiiiink

I just thunked about them a bit and pictured them in my stupid head

Funny that the one I didn't get was the one I should have been able to work out - circles and trig were the only things I did in maths before dropping it!

Jingsamichty

As an experiment, I actually tried out the bathroom mirror one last night... but the vanity unit got in the way and messed up my scientific results!!

Craftybanshee

I didn't get any right *runs sobbing from the forum* ......

Alberta_Rose

Oh well, I'm not much better ..... I suppose I only got the sock question right cos I sort socks for 4 people every week, and I already knew the bear one as I say......

dazzlerdaz

I guessed at a Black Bear ! Dont they have Albino Polar Bears ? doh !

Alberta_Rose

er yes I believe they do ......

dazzlerdaz

Well they must be BLACK then !.........so i was correct and the quiz was flawed

Alberta_Rose

Silly! Albino is lacking in pigment. QED Albinos are always white/milky!

dazzlerdaz

Well they should eat more pork !

Sorry........i thought you said PIGMEAT ! doh !