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Strange coincidences aren't surprising if you know

how numbers work By Washington Post, adapted by Newsela staff 11.08.16

A monkey with a typewriter, 1935. Photo by Imagno/Getty

Images. BOTTOM: A graph showing the probability of two
people in a group sharing the same birthday as the size of
the group increases. Guillaume Jacquenot. Photo:
Wikimedia Commons.

Mathematician Joseph Mazur loves stories

about strange coincidences. He heard one of his
favorites while riding in the back of a van. The
driver was an Italian language teacher named
Francesco. He told Mazur about meeting a
woman named Manuela who had come to study at his school. Francesco and Manuela met for
the first time at a hotel, and then went to have coffee.They spoke for an hour before the
awkward truth came out. Noting Manuela's nearly perfect Italian, Francesco finally asked why
she had come to his school. "She said, 'Italian? What are you talking about? I'm not here to
learn Italian,'" Mazur relates. "And then it dawned on both of them that she was the wrong
Manuela and he was the wrong Francesco." They returned to the hotel where they had met to
find a different Francesco offering a different Manuela a job she didn't want or expect.
Laws Of Probability
The tale is one of many stories in Mazur's new book, "Fluke." The book explores the probability,
or chance, of coincidences. A coincidence is when two things happen at the same time but it
seems like it's an accident or fate. It's something that's not planned or arranged like
showing up at school in the exact same outfit as your friend.
Mazur says that most coincidences can be explained by simple math. He thinks people would
be less surprised by coincidences if they understood the laws of probability.

Shared Birthdays
Many people might be surprised to meet someone who
shares their birthday. Should they be, though?
Mathematicians call this "the birthday problem." How big
does a group of people need to be before there's a
50-50 chance that two people share the same birthday?
The answer is a smaller number than most people think.
Consider it backward:

How many people will n

ot share a
birthday in a group? Among three people, there is a

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99.18 percent chance that nobody shares a birthday. It's almost guaranteed. But the odds
improve as the group gets bigger.
If you have five people, there is a 97.3 percent chance nobody shares a birthday. But with 15
people, it drops to 74.7 percent. Your odds of finding a double birthday between the 15 people
improve.
By the time the group has 23 people, you have a 50 percent chance or better that at least two
people will share a birthday.
So by the time the group reaches 60 people, it's close to certain that there will be a birthday
match.
Monkey With A Typewriter
Another famous example of probability is called the monkey problem. Mathematician Emile
Borel came up with it over 100 years ago.
Borel wanted to know if a series of random events could ever lead to something meaningful. For
example, if a monkey started hitting the keys of a typewriter, would it eventually type out a
famous poem by William Shakespeare?
Borel said the answer was yes. He said that a monkey could eventually type out a poem, though
it might take a very long time. One of Shakespeare's famous poems begins with the line "Shall I
compare thee to a summer's day?" The chance of a monkey randomly typing "shall" is low 1
in 12 million.
But if the monkey keeps typing, or other monkeys help, the probability drops. If the monkey tries
8.2 million times, the monkey has more than a 50-50 chance of typing the word "shall" at some
point in the attempt.
Common Mistakes About Chance
Mazur writes that when people think about about probabilities, they often make common
mistakes.
A lot of mistakes have to do with something called selective attention. For example, people are
more likely to notice and remember coincidences. They remember the small number of people
who share their birthday. They don't remember all of the people who don't. This can cause some
confusion since the number of people who don't share their birthday is actually much larger.

It's A Big World After All

As a result, people tend to overestimate or underestimate particular numbers. This gives rise to
their great surprise at many coincidences. People often forget how big the world is, Mazur
writes. With so many chance events happening to so many people around the globe,
coincidences are only natural.

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Name: __________________________________________
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Date: ____________
Period: ___________