Re: amarillo slim\'s favorite bet
 

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Admittedly, I was just being picky, but when somebody takes into account leap year, they are trying for an exact calculation. The problem is that the exact calculation makes an assumption that is convenient, but not true, so exact calculations are a bit meaningless anyhow.

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I could care less about an exact calculation. I took into account Feb. 29th for the same reason I took into account the other 365 days.

Re: amarillo slim\'s favorite bet
 

*smiles*

Fair enough BruceZ, wasn't trying to rain on your parade. Just figured it might be interesting to consider that the actual chance might be higher and favor the bet even more.

Re: amarillo slim\'s favorite bet
 

I was under the impression that Amarillo Slim performed this bet with 30 people, not 25. I think this increases the odds to about %72.

Re: amarillo slim\'s favorite bet
 

He wrote about thirty in his book.

Re: amarillo slim\'s favorite bet
 

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I was under the impression that Amarillo Slim performed this bet with 30 people, not 25. I think this increases the odds to about %72.

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70.6%, assuming 365 equally likely b-days.

Here are some other stats:

mean: 24.6
median: 23
mode: 20

The mean is the expected value, or the arithmetic average of the number of people it takes to get a match if we repeated this experiment over and over with different people. The median is the number of people it takes to get a match 50% of the time (actually 50.7% here). The mode is the most likely number of people it takes to get a match, or the most common number that results in a match.