As we approach the passing of Summer, I noticed the People who were born on this day headline. When I looked at the site, Ingrid Bergman showed up in two places: She was born on August 29th and died on August 29th. That's remarkable to me. It makes me consider the Birthday Paradox. Answersdrive.com has more about this:
"The birthday paradox is strange, counter-intuitive, and completely true. It's only a “paradox” because our brains can't handle the compounding power of exponents. We expect probabilities to be linear and only consider the scenarios we're involved in (both faulty assumptions, by the way).
Consequently, how likely is it to have the same birthday?
One person has a 1/365 chance of meeting someone with the same birthday. Two people have a 1/183 chance of meeting someone with the same birthday. But! Those two people might also have the same birthday, right, so you have to add odds of 1/365 for that.
Also, what are the odds of being born and dying on the same day?
So we have ~0.3097% chance of dying on a birthday while statistically (1/365) would lead us to believe there is only ~0.27397% chance of dying on a birthday. That is indeed a 13% increase in chance of death on a birthday from 1/365.
Is it rare to die on your birthday? Tradition has it that William Shakespeare also died on his birthday - born on April 23 1564 and died on April 23 1616 - he was 52 years old.
Among 25 million Americans who died between 1998 and 2011, 6.7% more people than expected die on their birthday, and the effect was most pronounced at weekends and among the young – among 20 to 29 year olds, the excess was over 25%."
As the days go by, we are coming to the most common birthday: It is September 9th. The least common birthday is December 25th.
Our image today is a montage of spring cherries and one of my abstract pastels. I like the colourful effect with the pastel sensibility.
