Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Siblings' birth dates

It is an unusual occurrence, but I'm not sure it's the 130,000 to one shot that the Times says it is.
Two siblings being born on the same day in different years was unlikely enough. But when Kim MacKriell had a third child delivered on the same day, she beat odds of more than 130,000 to 1.
Okay, if we ignore this particular couple and just talk about odds the only way this is a 130,000 to 1 shot is if all the dates in the calendar are equally likely as birth dates for the siblings. I'm not going any further than to say that it's possible that is not actually the case.