Photo courtesy of Ali Inay at Unsplash.com
The theme of #52 Ancestors this week is selecting an ancestor that shares or is close to your birthday (month/day). Could that be possible? Yes. Would you need a large family tree to find a relative to find just one person? No.
I ran a birthday report in my Family Tree Maker (FTM) database in preparation of this Sunday’s post. No birthdays came up on the calendar on my birthday. Which after a quick analysis I knew something was not right because I wasn’t listed either. I remembered from a college math class that in just a small group people the probability was a significant number. I have over 3000 people in my tree, something was wrong with the report.
That meant the FTM parameters must not be right. Garbage in, garbage out. So I looked at the report factors, deselected a couple of checked boxes, and reran the report. Viola! There were four people in my family tree that shared my birthday.
In a group of 23 randomly selected people, the odds that you would share a birthday with someone is 50%. The chart below shows the increases of probability by just adding a few more people.
Chart by Stan Brown, Oakroad Systems
Don’t trust my math? Just Google it, or go to http://www.tc3.edu/instruct/sbrown/stat/birthday.htm
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