10th December 2008

N people are there in a group. It is known that the probability that atleast two of them having common birthday is "P".

find the smallest N such that P is greater than 1/2

(This is an easy problem. Do not get intimidated by the language!!)

28 Answers

1
Honey Arora ·

same is the case whn we tk n=0
and moreover by bernollies trials combinations shd be used nt permutations

62
Lokesh Verma ·

a good reference for this same problem could be

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

It is the very famous birthday problem :P

In the hind sight, this could be one of the most useless (calculative) problem that i have probably given here :P :|

24
eureka123 ·

is soln #23 Ok ??

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

I think I messed up with the leap year part. Otherwise was my approach right? Will be glad to recieve your comment on this :)

9
Celestine preetham ·

were did u get these log datas

1
sindhu br ·

varun..........I think u r right
even i thought of the same

1
varun ·

365Pn/365n ≤ 1/2

So only manual calc lol... (only non-leap years )

1
ith_power ·

ans=23. for finding it easily we can use log table instead of 'man power'!!.

9
Celestine preetham ·

yes Varun is right
ne way
i think we can solve this only by manually calc is there any algebraic way varun

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

n=0 means none of the persons have a common dob :)

1
Honey Arora ·

itz nt comparing...see like 1 or 0 person cn't hv common b'day,itz for sure

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

i didn't use permutations directly, honey. i just expressed the ans i got permutatory terms or whatever they are.

1
varun ·

Yes i understood .. I got N = 23 when we consider only non-leap year.. Don't want to calc for leap year now :P

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

when you're comparing dob's of two or more persons, it's logical. But when you compare dob of a person with his own dob, you know it is going to always b equal. :)

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

I think the correct answer is..........data is insufficient.

Judging by the probability of atleast 2 users of targetiit.com having same dob, you cannot find the number of users [Maybe u can Nishantbhai but not us ;)].

Probability of two people having bday on same day is
(3/4) {1/(365)2} + (1/4) {1/(366)2}

PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG :)

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

@varun : thnx for pointing out mistake, machan! You're right. it should be (365)N. Did u understand the rest of the solution?

P.S: This is not anywhere near the final answer

1
varun ·

x(or n) is the number of people having same birthdate... .. when n=1, p(n=1) = 0..

i.e. when number of people is 1, then 2 people can't have same birthdate

1
Honey Arora ·

ys bt see acc to ques if u hv considered no person hving b'day on particular day thn y nt consider 1 person having b'day on particular day?

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

Probability of a person having the same dob as himself is always 1 :)

1
Honey Arora ·

bt y is P(x=1) also nt included?

1
varun ·

Shouldn't it be /(365)N and not 'n' ?

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

Explanation for my apparently bamboozling ans ;)
N is as mentioned in the question.
Probability of n presons getting the same dob is ,P(n)=
3/4 (1/365)n ------- not leap year
+ --------or
1/4 (1/366)n --------- leap year

n=0 => dob of each person is different
P(n=0) = 3 [ 365.364.363........(365-N)]
/4*(365)n
+
1 [366.365.364.........(366-N)]
/4*(366)n

Understood till now?
n≠1 as one person always has same dob as himself. We require,
P= P( atleast 2 have same dob)= P(n≥2)
=1-P(n=0)
Also,
P≥1/2

thus 1- P(n=0)≥ 1/2 and substitute for P(n=0). Hopefully you'll get what i got and prove me right ;)

62
Lokesh Verma ·

No honey.. the answer is much larger..

You will have to do some trial and error to reach the final answer though! :(

That is the bad part of this question...

1
varun ·

Is it 366 (if not a leap year) and 367 if it a leap year ?

62
Lokesh Verma ·

Hmm.. interesting...

Well the formula upstairs looks like something that i had studied when i was somewhere in my "teens". I dont remember exactly buy yeah.. some what that ;)

Now that I have made out what you had above! Let me see what you have written down below!

Well I was not too interested in the leap year thing! (Definitely not cos it Wasnt a puzzle [3]) but cos you have included that too, I had to think for a while.. and then think for another.. just to be sure... and then type this whole thing down just to say that you were right :)

11
Anirudh Narayanan ·

CHECK IF FORMULA GIVEN BELOW IS CORRECT AND THEN PROCEED:

nPr = n(n-1)(n-2).........(n-r+1)(n-r)

IF INCORRECT PLS INFORM ME

IF NOT MAKE WHAT U CAN OF WHAT IS GIVEN BELOW ;)

I think you will get ans if.............. u solve the eq'n given below

3[365PN/(365)N]+ [366PN/(366)N] = 2 :)

62
Lokesh Verma ·

I will give a very trivial example.

if P>0

then we know that there is atleast one user on targetiit.com

Otherwise there will be no user! (So i have one bound.. )

This might not be very insightful for the current problem. But I am not giving you any insight either.. :P

just trying to justify that the problem does make sense! :)

62
Lokesh Verma ·

Ok.. let us put it like this.. find the smallest N such that the probability above is greater than 1/2

May be I messed up in my language.. :(

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