Education Technology


Birthday Problem

Activity Overview

Investigate the probability of two people having the same birthday in a crowd of a given size.

Objectives

  • Describe how sampling a population with N objects works
  • Use the complement of an event to determine probability of an event not occurring

Vocabulary

  • event
  • series
  • probability

About the Lesson

This lesson involves investigating the probability of two people having the same birthday in a crowd of a given size. Topics covered include basic probability theory, sampling distributions and infinite series approximations. As a result, students will:

  • Be able to use probability to determine the likelihood of two people having the same birthday in a crowd of a given size.
  • Be able to justify the probability of two people having the same birthday.