Re: Circular lists

On 2009-01-16, Rasmus Villemoes <burner+usenet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
sln@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

how many people in a room does it take to statistically almost
guarantee 2 people will have the same birth date (day-month) out of
365 days/year?

Answer: 26

That's the number of people making the probability of at least two
people sharing a birthday > 0.59. That is certainly not the same as
"statistically almost guarantee", whatever that means. 23 people make
the probability > 0.5.

Most statiticians set a lower bound of 0.95 for general "reasonably
certain" purposes. Anything lower than that is usually accounted as
insufficiently reliable for almost any purposes where you don't want to
gamble on being wrong. Many purposes require greater certainty, of course.
To get probablility > 0.95, you need 47 people. For p > 0.99, you need
57. p > 0.999, 70.

--
Christopher Mattern

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