Underestimating co-incidence

 

 

Underestimating co-incidence

The tendency of people to be poor at taking all pairings of an event into account when estimating the probability of co-incidences. For example, if there are twenty three people in a room (selected randomly) the probability of at least two of them having a birthday on the same date of the year is over half. People tend to think of twenty-three pairings, but altogether there are (23 x 22/2=) 253 such pairings and the members of any pairing can have the same birthday.

 

see also: likelihood, Law of large numbers)

 

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Labels: underestimating co-incidence, underestimating coincidence, underestimation of co-incidence, underestimation of coincidence, co-incidence – underestimate, when estimating the probability of co-incidences – tendency to be poor at taking all pairings of an event into account
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