Reply To: Baby beats 48 million to one odds

Since I’m the OP I guess I have the responsibility to add to the discussion.

The way I look at it is:

Guy- birthday is insignificant since as of now any birthday will satisfy the study.

Wife- The odds that he will pick a wife with the same birthday is 1/365 (assuming that there are no leap years).

Child- The odds that the child will be born on the same birthday as the two of them is also 1/365 (again, ignoring leap years).

Therefore overall odds are (ignoring the possibility that mother nature was manipulated) are 1/133,225.

One of my favorite abuses of statistics comes from a conversation between two friends who were driving to Colorado.

About ten minutes into the trip the driver floors the gas. When questioned he explained that statistically speaking, a driver has the biggest chance of having an accident within five miles of where they live, since they already passed five miles he could let down his guard.

“But what about the people whose five mile radius we just entered?”