Water Cooler Small Talk: The Birthday Paradox 🎂🎉

Data Science | Statistics

A have a look at the counterintuitive mathematics of shared birthdays

Water cooler small talk is a special sort of small talk, typically observed in office spaces around a water cooler. There, employees regularly share every kind of corporate gossip, myths, and legends, inaccurate scientific opinions, indiscreet personal anecdotes, or outright lies. Anything goes. So, in my Water Cooler Small Talk posts, I discuss strange and frequently scientifically invalid opinions I even have overheard within the office which have literally left me speechless.

Here’s the water cooler opinion of today’s post:

I work in an office floor with 60+ people, and last week two of them had their birthdays on the identical day. Realizing they shared their birthday, that they had a conversation somewhere along the next lines:

– I cannot consider we’ve our birthdays on the identical day!

– Yes, what are the possibilities?

..and everybody commented on how strange it was. A crazy, karmic coincidence…

🌌🥳

But for real, what are the possibilities? With a fast estimation, one might imagine that the possibilities of such an event must be very low…